#the enemy designs and layout are really interesting so far too

[captain-k8kat]

So far, I don't like lies of p as much as I like bloodborne, though that's not saying much because I love bloodborne more than any other game. Lies of P is still a really excellent game.

[nekyn-alb]

Lies of P Demo: Gameplay and Style Review

Style and Narrative

The game looks excellent, from small clutter to massive building fronts. Every street corner is packed with traces of human life ripped apart by the puppet uprising without being stuffed, floating furniture or badly aligned windows are rare, although they do exist here and there. That's completely fine, it happens in every game and often more obviously than here.

Areas are interconnected nicely, although not particularly complex so far. Being able to climb to another level here and there and not dying for jumping off a low roof is good fun.

The hub is not too large, has a lovely atmosphere, and you can see from the stargazer teleport which (additional?) NPCs are in it. Being able to groove with sad tunes is a great design choice. When talking to NPCs however, I have to ask: why can't I talk to them from any direction and why do they take such long pauses between their lines when every other readable prompt disappears two seconds too early?

In many aspects, I find the game too derivative of Bloodborne. Blatantly so, to be honest. Stalkers are hunters, puppets are beasts, both appear to be bereft of humanity. Workshops are workshops, Sophia is a firekeeper (with standard greeting!), the petrification disease stands in for a beast plague driving victims mad, the aesthetic and layout of the city is vaguely adjacent to Yharnam--not gothic of course, but bridges and plazas and carriages and boxes are all so strongly reminiscent that I sometimes felt like recognizing Cleric Beast's bridge, Gascoigne's summoning spot or Arianna's alley. Ergo and otherworldly materials will probably develop into an alien influence adjacent to BB's Great Ones and the arcane cosmic.

But don't fret, the original story elements possess some intrigue of their own. Next to the mystery of maddened puppets, it appears we will come across fairy-like influences that explain the origin of Geppetto's automaton vision, which has been wiped from at least two puppets' minds.

The petrification disease could also be interesting. I am not sure if it comes from the puppets yet, maybe an influence of their ergo, but having more cause of chaos than brutal mayhem is always good.

I always love me a good critique of large companies, so the different depictions of how they influence Krat's life on the large and small scale are welcomed. Soulslikes tend to struggle to put meaning behind their copies, but here I can already posit theories, like the struggle representing P's drive to gain a speck of humanity.

Hooray for making the dingy Daedalians blow up, boo for implying that Venigni is going to be a rad wheel-spinning robogrinder instead of the greedy loser he is meant to be. Knowing the genre, he's probably going to end up mad anyways though.

P should be voiced. No reason not to, really. He is a character with development, not a blank slate. FromSoft allowed Sekiro to speak, you don't have to cling to other titles' concepts.

Gameplay

So you don't think I'm just salty, here's my Souls Cred (I'm a bit proud of these, fight me): Finished DS1, DS3, BB, Sekiro & Elden Ring, the middle three several times, and recently beat DS3+Ashes at SL1. I gave up on my BL4 and No Beads Runs halfway through because I hate getting one-shot. On my first playthrough, I beat every (and I mean every) ER boss bar five in less than 10 tries. I like these games a lot and would like to believe that I know what I'm talking about.

Let's start with the compliments!

Enemies appear in plentiful sizes and shapes with interesting models and varied move sets. Regular puppets have a fun amount of health and deal dangerous but not overwhelming damage.

P's quickly unlocked weapons are equally versatile, even if they only seem to have two light/heavy attacks each. For the most part, they feel appropriately weighty and I never noticed a swing being too fast or slow. Reassembling weapon parts can be strange because the handle determines the moveset, so a blunt mace head might adopt a rapier's quick stabs. Funny enough to not be off-putting.

P himself moves adequately well. He doesn't slip too easily from the thin catwalks bridging Krat's roofs and turns quickly. Same for the camera, this is the first game in a while where I didn't crank the sensitivity up to 8.

Dogs don't teleport. Good dogs.

I skimmed most of the tutorials because they are just Souls mechanics, but they do a fine job of explaining the basics. Being able to see that you have enough ergo by the number becoming blue is a wonderful idea.

The skills seem to be fairly extensive and might allow for a solid build once you get far enough. They should be unlocked earlier though.

There is a rewarding amount of items strewn throughout the world and even the frequent sawtooth cog drops feel nice. It's cool to have something to trigger traps with from afar!

Dropping ergo in front of the boss room is very kind and a good conclusion when you hand the player infinite homeward bones with the watch.

I like the pulse cell regain through attacking. Could go a bit faster though, you don't have that many to begin with.

And now we get to the detailed negatives, much of which comes down to the ever-maligned frame data.

Parrying needs a few more frames. Maybe guard should linger on its own instead of being spammable. Since they basically do not have to recover after a parry, slower weapons get one hit in, then they strike again and hyper armor through anything, even charged heavy attacks. This does not feel good by being unresponsive to player actions. Where's my reward for nailing three perfect parries in a row? And why do I sometimes take damage after I get the SUCCESS vibration and ping? Even red attacks shouldn't knock me down and punish me for perfect parrying.

Perhaps there should also be an indicator like Sekiro's red kanji, whose fading tells you when to act. The red sparks only tell you that a special attack is coming sometime in the next five seconds. Subverting Sekiro's kanji into not being able to dodge the red attack is also an odd choice, since you can dodge it with proper spacing. Without mikiri counter or jumps it only leaves parrying, and again, odd choice. The game didn't need this feature, considering…

Dodge has no travel distance and struggles to actually dodge. I am fine with limited iframes, but if I can't move out of an enemies range with two dodges, I question why I even have the ability. Another factor for the insufficient dodge is how little Capacity improves your carry weight. If I want to stay under 29% for a somewhat acceptable dodge, I can't use a club AND armor pieces. The legion arm was thrown right out because of how heavy it is.

Strongly delayed attacks a la Elden Ring are just annoying. Malfunctioning puppets have an actual reason for doing it, but it's not natural. You have to memorize attack patterns instead of reacting to them. Waiting three seconds for an attack to come down in an instant feels weird.

The waiting game makes for a lackluster combination of Bloodborne and Sekiro. There need to be larger windows between attacks for heavy weapons and less recovery after striking back.

The weapon durability system isn't very appealing to me. The game moves too fast for this tactical element, which would work better in something paced like earlier Souls titles. Bouncing off the opponent with everything, including weapon arts, is bad. That's not how durability works or should be represented. Just make me deal less damage instead of stealing my turn for surviving until the end of the fight. You also forget about it because the areas are too short for your weapon to degrade noticeably.

The stronger watchmen feel like they have too much health (I was level 30 with a balanced build + rapier at the end). Not a lot too much, but their resistance could be lowered for more enjoyable mini bosses inbetween areas of enemies.

Dummy traps could last about 1.5 seconds less.

Why do you only get rally on chip damage? There is no lore reason like in Bloodborne, and I doubt there could be any that would make sense for it to be restricted to blocked attacks. Enemies (bosses!) should not have access to rally, period.

Enemies feel like they have block or jagged models/boxes that won't let me pass. When P collides with them, they stick instead of sliding past each other, which often meant that I was stuck right in the enemy's weapon arm. This is particularly obnoxious with long-limbed bosses, who will just trap me with their left arm and attack with the right. Because of the long dodge recovery, I can't adjust after this happens either.

Why are there six enemies with what appears to be instant parry next to each other? Give that to one or two in a group, otherwise you'll be ganked (completely fine) and an attempt to strike back after parrying one enemy will be punished.

Watchman Paarl leaves shock traps that sometimes hit you as soon as you get up, making it an unnecessary double punishment. He also has two very fast attacks with barely any windup that are inconsistent with his regular attack speed (and another fast one that winds up for about 2.5 seconds). Since all his strikes are either right-left windup while crouching or standing, they and the grab are difficult to distinguish.

Since all his larger attacks place him right on top of you (slams and Sonic slam), he can just combo any attack from there and hits. The grab often caught me because of our models sticking together when I tried to dodge after such a slam or a shock trap. The grab also reaches too far and has unintuitive windup-followup, which messes with dodge timings too hard for an early enemy.

Speaking of shock traps, the radial burst with random lightning bolts surrounded by a ring of lightning doesn't feel fair. Where am I supposed to dodge with my half-inch frolicking steps? Run startup is too long to flee, what fires first is hard to foresee. And when he decides to do another Paarl burst right after, which doesn't have the appropriate charge before blowing up, you've just eaten three to five attacks without seeing any of them.

I enjoyed my time a lot, some improvements and this'll be a great game!

[everygame]

Wishbringer (PC)

Developed/Published by: Infocom Released: 1/5/1985 Completed: 20/07/2022 Completion: Finished it, 100/100. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

Brian Moriarty has a couple of sad Infocom milestones in his career (which I should note have nothing to do with him directly) Wishbringer, released in mid-1985, was the first game the company would release after dooming the company with the ill-concieved Cornerstone project and would be (as noted by the Digital Anitquarian) “one of the company’s last genuine hits” and his next project, 1986’s Trinity, would be (according to Wikipedia) “the last game released by the company when it was solvent.”

Oof.

I hadn’t originally planned to play Wishbringer–I was going to skip ahead to A Mind Forever Voyaging–but Wishbringer is particularly mentioned as a bit of a hidden gem in the Infocom catalogue and being intentionally designed as an “introductory” text adventure I was interested to see how Infocom’s design continued to evolve since the willfully obtuse Hitchiker’s Guide.

Well, the answer is… I think the answer I’m coming to is that I don’t think Infocom actually had a particularly consistent design philosophy. I suppose it’s early days in game development, but it really feels like each “implementor” was treated as an author not just in terms of content and writing but also design (and, in fact, if you read Stu Galley’s “Implementor’s Creed” written in 1985, as much as it hedges, it seems to imply such a thing.) 

This means that, well, advances weren’t necessarily consistently brought forward, and even for an “introductory” adventures, a lot of decisions are made here that represent, well, bad, unwelcoming design. And often, it’s the little things. By this point, you’d think, inventory limits would be a thing of the past, and even Hitchiker’s Guide has the sense to make you drop something randomly when you pick up too much and offer a bag of holding (admittedly only if you can work that out*) Here, you struggle with what feels like a very strict inventory limit and a wide-open map with a roaming enemy, making it risky to drop something you might need.

*I thought maybe the wizard’s hat here might be a bag of holding, but it just seems to… destroy items. And you will almost certainly use it immediately in one of the more obvious puzzles, so…

Of course, it actually is “educational” for a new infocom player to deal with a lot of frustration, even if I think it’s pretty unintentional. Take the opening: you’re given a nice clear goal and then quickly bump into your first puzzle that locks you into a small area and has a fairly obvious solution. That’s good! But once that’s out of the way, you basically unlock the entire map and have a strict (and honestly unnecessary) time-limit to complete your first task, at which point the map–while keeping the same layout–changes significantly, rendering some items totally inaccessible for the rest of the game.

What’s even weirder about that is some of those items are necessary to use the titular wishbringer, which was explicitly designed to be a pressure-release for new adventure gamers allowing themselves to “wish” their way through puzzles! So very quickly Wishbringer hits that problem (or perhaps intentional feature, such as in Hitchhiker’s Guide) that you’ll have to restart or restore earlier saves in order to even really get the sense of the game. I’m not sure it’s as bad as Hitchhiker’s Guide–I think as far as items go, if you miss one that’s needed to wish, you can solve the puzzle, and vice versa–but at least once I locked myself out of an area completely with something I still needed to do in there, forcing a restore.

I suppose you could say I’m being a little hard on this for, basically, having all the usual problems, and probably especially because I can’t help but compare it to my high watermark for Infocom (so far) Planetfall, designed by the more established Steven Meretsky. But I was definitely struck by the fact that–as is often the case–the prose only served to obfuscate rather than help a new player. Indeed, sometimes the text used to try and help a new player only made things worse! That area I got myself locked out of? I got myself locked out after the game told me I “didn’t need to refer to the switches to in this story” when what I actually needed to do was specifically refer to the FIRST switch and the SECOND switch.

(That one ended up in a trip to the invisiclues, unfortunately.)

So I don’t think is particularly successful as an introductory adventure–certainly no more than Planetfall, even accepting that that one has loads of empty rooms–but it doesn’t mean that I actually had a bad time with this. It is honestly rather charming. You play a day-dreaming postal worker who ends up in an evil, mirror-version of his seaside town on a quest to rescue a black cat (my favourite!) and as much as I’m not crazy about the map, I kind of get it–I think I’m just “spoiled” by Hitchhiker’s Guide’s self-contained vignettes (anyway, it’s not particularly big and it does have a central fountain hub). The puzzles are not hard if you follow the rule I always forget (examine, look behind, in, under and around EVERYTHING) and have a few restores under your belt. The story is no great shakes (outside of a weirdly dark story in the manual which doesn’t really relate to much) but, and I might be presumptuous here, there’s a Loom-like whimsy that implies Moriarty is more about giving the player a sense of place and feeling rather than a particularly deep narrative. And a few of the twists and turns are clever enough that I chuckled.

It’s a game I found myself a little more frustrated by than I hoped to be while playing it, but it’s a game I already think about warmly in retrospect. It doesn’t have anything about it that really blows your socks off–no Deadline chases, no Planetfall narrative thrills, no Hitchhiker’s meta gags–it’s just sort of sweet, like a kids’ fantasy novel that you read in an afternoon while feeling poorly because it just takes you somewhere pleasant for a while.

Will I ever play it again? It feels like one I’d return to, and it’s made me think that I should return to the many Infocom adventures from the pre-Cornerstone golden era I’ve skipped one day. 

Final Thought: Actually, speaking of kids’ fantasy novels, there actually was one for Wishbringer! And there were other Infocom books too! But my understanding is none of them were particularly good (though perhaps Wishbringer is the highlight.) As a huge fan of Nintendo’s Worlds of Power books–I read the hell out of Blaster Master and Castlevania II–I have to admit I’m interested in seeking them out anyway..

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi, either via a one-off donation (pay what you like) or by joining as a supporter at just $1 a month.

[handlesscombo]

thoughts on sonic frontiers so far; got my copy early. spoilers under the cut!

i have at this point played through the first two islands, and just started the third. so i'll first organize thoughts by island, then do overalls afterward.

i will admit my bias: i have wanted (3D) sonic to be good again for so long, and this title has a lot going for it. knowing this, i will be as honest about what doesnt work as i can, and check myself as i go. would love to hear others' thoughts on it as well!

#1: Kronos Island

- THE KOCO. ARE SO BAbie. just need to get that off my chest. love love love them. little bell guys. fit in your arms and so cute and lovable. adore them and WILL be buying plushie as soon as it drops (amazon has a leaked listing for them, i know it's coming). anyway.

- running, jumping, homing attack all feel very smooth; strong sense of forward momentum and physically satisfying. captures the best of sonic gameplay, but does have a learning curve as button inputs for classic mechs have changed. homing attack is mapped to a diff button than jump, for example. but it does honestly feel better and makes room for more varied manuevers than previous games, ie a double jump and homing attack from the ground without jumping prior. gamefeel/controls are solid.

- the paraloop (or cyloop as it is called) is a very fun throwback to nights. love the idea that sonic inherited it from them, so to speak. adds a lot to the core gameplay, not just in combat; useful for solving puzzles, too. very solid addition

- camera is a bit fucky. generally it's fine, but there were instances where it flipped around unhelpfully/clipped through things. will hopefully be fixed in patches.

- architecture is lacking; visuals don't give a strong first impression. feels a bit empty, which is a big problem in a semi-open world game. this does improve later however

- cyberspace levels are going to be a hot-button issue across reviews. the implementation of them as separate from the open world is questionable, and the gameplay feels strangely more stiff than in the rest of the game. unsure why that is. architecturally and visually, i love them -- great lighting and colors, fast-paced, interesting to look at and compare to previous games' levels. familiar layouts mixed with unfamiliar visuals create this disjointed collage of somic's memories, which is the narrative explanation for them. interesting in concept, lukewarm in execution.

- enemy designs are interesting; mechanical, jagged, yet colorful; unlike anything in a prior sonic game. effective at creating an "otherworldly" and inter-dimensional feeling. would compare to how ultra beasts are distinctly unsettling because they don't resemble the pokemon we're used to.

- combat is engaging, but limited; have yet to unlock skills to make it snappier. at its core, however, feels good and almost platinum-esque; addition of strafing, parrying, combo counter adds sense of momentum and adrenaline that should always be present in sonic combat.

- unsure how to feel about the skill tree so far. not gonna comment until ive completed it.

- soundtrack evolves as you complete more of the area, layering in instruments and such. nice touch

- very satisfied with story and characterization. amy feels like her own distinct person and not just "annoying sonic love interest"; the two have really sincere conversations that add nuance to both of their characters. the subtlties are what ive dearly missed about the writing and havent felt since SA2. sonic is sooooo much less quippy and whedon-esque, fucking finally. ian flynn is a capable writer who understands what sonic storylines can be, and i hope they continue to let him helm these projects.

- side note that i love: in the original sonic cd, amy was supposed to be a fortune teller. this was sort of removed/scrapped from her canon over time, but flynn brought it back into the foreground! it's mentioned that she does tarot readings and has strong intuition and ability to empathize with people around her (not in a cringe "i am an empath" way, more like she tries to understand others as best she can and uses that insight for good). i really really like this direction for her character. one of the most impactful comvos in the game so far is with her, and i cant repeat it word for word, but it's about how amy wants to travel the world sharing the love she has for it with others. very sweet

- boss fight was incredibly hype, if a bit repetitive. soundtrack fucks so hard. boss looks like an evangelion, which is funny because sage's jpn voice actor also voiced rei ayanami haha. love the music, the shift into familiar super sonic controls. resembles the finalhazard fight in SA2

#2: Ares Island

- architecture vastly better than the first island; more to look at and crawl through, striking desert clay/cyan/purple/red color palette. the color grading between night and day is striking; amazing what good lighting can do :')

- cyberspace levels are beautiful in this one, reminiscent of sky sanctuary and the skeletal structure of radical highway. the looks continue to impress. gameplay remains a bit stiff

- this island has a mechanical theme to it: most enemies, boss fights , and puzzles are about timing-based precision exercises. i will admit these are my favorite parts of sonic games -- high-speed challenges with timing-based mechanical skill involved -- so i might be too biased in its favor to review it accurately. for my part, however, i will say that i found it snappy, engaging, and streamlined a la bayonetta. very satisfying to nail the timing when fighting enemies. people who dislike fast QTEs may like it less, but on a scale of david cage to bayonetta, they definitely lean into bayonetta, and feel approptiately organic/nice physicality.

- knuckles is my favorite sonic character, so i will say i wanted a bit more out of his convos with sonic. however, i love that flynn is able to combine multiple aspects of knuckles' identity into a consistent portrayal -- he is a warrior, a rival, a friend, an expert on ancient ruins, reclusive, and carries a debilitating loneliness that he cant fight on his own. he is more than previously dumbed-down interpretations of his character, and im very grateful for that. hes a glimpse of the old well-intentioned but gullible and stubborn character he was in s3k and the adventure era.

- boss design and mechanics were much more exciting than the first. soundtrack was equally hype and fucks. the aerial nature of the fight really added some pussy to it. im a professional games journalist

- more sprinklings of lore about the nature of these islands and the implications of their connections to chaos (sa1) and the chaos emeralds, as well as the true nature of the chaos emeralds. really interesting and keeps you guessing. looking forward to how it resolves

#3: Chaos Island

- not enthused about the amount of fog and grayness of this one so far. really hoping it develops more identity visually. kind of muddy, too. downgrade from ares

- mechanical theme seems to be more classic sonic design; lots of 2d segments and old-school spring traps, spikes, so on. waiting to see it develop

- already love the big brother dynamic sonic has with tails. the two are openly affectionate (hugs, etc) and endearing to watch. structurally i expect tails is going to figure out something major abt the tech of the islands, which is why they waited to have him appear until the third island. looking forward to it

Overall

i anticipate that this game is going to consistently score 6.5 or 7/10 at most review outlets. it's good, distinctly stronger in its identity and story than other sonic games, and a refreshing, much-needed change of pace tonally, visually, mechanically. it isn't blowing my mind yet (and i hope it will), but there is a palpable heart and ambition here that has been absent for a very long time.

the game's strongest asset so far is its story and boss/enemy design + combat, imo. the visuals are enjoyable amd striking on ares island, but the first and third would benefit from a rework. gameplay has a solid foundation and feels good

it's important to note that for 3d sonic, the bar has been on the Floor for years. my impressions likely express that whether i wanted them to or not; i do think that it's a valuable discussion, if separate from the game"s overall objective integrity, to unpack its improvements on the franchise. as such, i give you my two overall ratings:

as a sonic game: 8.5/10

as an overall game: 7/10

there u have it. please reply with thoughts if you also have any!!!!!

ps: game of the year because you can draw amogus and cock and balls with paraloops.

[thecodeveronica]

Well I'm dying to talk about Castlevania or I'll explode so here's my tier list for the "modern" era, regular timeline (non-LoS) games (basically SotN and onward), in honor of me getting the Platinum trophy for Dominus Collection last night :)

Reasons under the cut:

S Tier

Portrait of Ruin - LOOOOOVE this one. It's been my fave since pretty much the very first time I played it back on the DS and still is after my recent replay with the collection. Jonathan and Charlotte are just such fun protagonists and stand out a lot in this series, and I think the story is actually pretty decent in this one. By CV standards lol. Soundtrack is AMAZING, please listen to "Gaze Up at the Darkness" because it RULES. PoR also has very fair boss fights and a fair level EXP gain rate, and good drops from enemies too. The paintings are super neat too, mixes up the usual "well, here's Dracula's castle" of most of the games.

Lament of Innocence - I actually think OoE is an objectively better game overall, but I have a lot of love for Lament and am one of its big defenders so I'll put it one slot above lol. Leon! My favorite Belmont! He goes through the wringer in this game, and it's a very interesting origin story for the Belmont fight against Dracula. The gameplay is fun, kind of DMC-lite but with a whip (and cool elemental versions you can get from some optional fights). The level design is a lot of long hallways, but it has good atmosphere, and the game doesn't overstay its welcome as it is pretty short. Another FANTASTIC soundtrack too btw.

Order of Ecclesia - a game I didn't like at all back on the DS but fell in love with after my Dominus replay. Once the gameplay clicks, it is so satisfying swapping glyph loadouts and hitting weaknesses on enemies. You have to play smarter in this game, and it was fun improving. Hype as hell when you finally get to the castle, too. Shanoa is a very cool protagonist and has some of the best lines in the series, and I'm unabashedly obsessed with Albus. GOD he was so asdjfk;ls sorry, but damn was he perfectly tailored to my tastes. Story was good in this one, actually made me a bit emotional ngl, which is something I don't expect from this series lol. I lose my mind over the songs "Sorrow's Distortion" and "Rituals" just so you know

A Tier

Aria of Sorrow - extremely good game where the handheld ones found their footing fully, with a very cool concept of "what if Dracula was gone, but maybe he isn't ;)" Soma is iconic for good reason, and the Soul System is fun with a lot of options, even if I'm not nuts enough to ever try for 100% soul completion lmao. The castle is a little small in this one and it feels oddly short for the Metroidvania-era games, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I like the almost... soft?... look of the visuals in this one. Graham is also one of the villains I kinda like the most in this series, so that's cool.

Dawn of Sorrow - Pretty much Aria of Sorrow 2 lol. But I think it loses a little without the novelty of AoS's questions about Soma as the Dark Lord and all. Also, the villains in this game are fucking goobers lol, their character designs are godawful. Other than the castle being larger this time around, I think DoS doesn't really do anything different than AoS, and since I'm a freak who values story, I prefer Aria overall. That said, Julius Mode is pretty sick and I think Dawn's soundtrack is a little stronger overall.

B Tier

Symphony of the Night - I feel like it's blasphemy putting SotN this far down, but I honestly think it is a bit overrated. Good certainly and extremely important to the franchise, but also kinda jank to go back and play. I don't like the way equipment or items work in this game, and I'm not... super fond of the castle layout compared to the higher tier games. Inverted castle is also kinda meh, the only time I like that is when PoR did it with the paintings. However, I do love the original PS1 dub of this game. Absolutely iconic. The newer one sucks because it's so safe that it loses the charm. Like, come on. I think a series that has giant Frankenstein's Monster enemies shooting bullets out of its elbows can afford to have some cheesy lines and voice acting.

Harmony of Despair - a really fun multiplayer game! But it could use more maps (that it'll never get since it's long been abandoned 😭), and character balance is a little iffy. But I have a lot of fun with this one, even just with two players! It's functionally co-op Metroidvania, what's not to like? I think this game would do quite well with a revival on modern consoles and cross-play, and I dream of a world where that exists and they add new DLC. why the hell wasn't Albus in this game btw, like wtf he literally was playable in OoE and had sprites available

Harmony of Dissonance - ...this is confusing putting the two games with "Harmony" in their name right next to each other when they're not connected at all lol. Anyway, I like HoD, but it has some definite issues, the most of the games in this tier. The visuals are... hoo boy. The color palette is a bit much. And the music is uh... it's infamous in the series for a reason. The sad thing is that I think the actual compositions are solid, just hamstrung by the shitty Gameboy sound chip or whatever, and I'm someone who usually likes retro game music. Gameplay is solid, though! The A/B castle thing is kind of annoying because this game has some atrocious warp room locations IMO, but it's fun being able to dash and slide with reckless abandon as Juste. Wind+Bible is also a godly subweapon combo

Grimoire of Souls - damn you, Apple Arcade, for having this as an exclusive. I can't speak to the gameplay on this one for that reason, but I watched a whole 3.5 hour playthrough for the story, so I'm judging on that, mostly. A fun little plot that let characters from a lot of different time periods/games interact, which is cool. Lucy and Hermina were good original characters, too. Death in this game was kinda 👀 Lol I kid I kid, I only have eyes for Albus, who was not nearly as important in this game as I'd hoped but had an extremely nice scene with Shanoa, so it was worth. Jonathan and Charlotte were also very entertaining here, as always. I'll be real: those three were the whole reason I watched this tbh

C Tier

Circle of the Moon - this game is SO HARD. Like, I eventually got good in Order of Ecclesia to overcome the difficulty, but that moment of understanding just never hit me in this game. And there are no shops!! Oh my goooooooood, why??? If you could get potions more easily, it might be a little more reasonable, but I don't think the drop rates were even that good to make up for it. The boss fights were so tough, man... If I give this another try, I might have to do the DSS glitch, which I didn't know about at the time.

Curse of Darkness - Real talk, I don't remember this one very well at this point. I mostly just remember not liking the Innocent Devil system or the map design that much and thinking it was disappointing after I loved Lament so much. Maybe I'd like it better if I tried it again now, I dunno. Not much to say here. I like Netflix!Hector better though :(

D Tier

Judgment - Look, I have some good memories from this game. I used to play it against my sisters. I was super excited for it at the time. But it's just a super jank game. And the story mode is BAD (aside from a few characters). Like, I can handle anime cringe. But this is the BAD kind of anime cringe, the "boob envy"-kind of anime cringe. Maria's story is *gag sounds* Also not a fan of the roster choices here. CV3 in particular gets way too much rep, the GBA-DS era not enough (only Shanoa, and even then they murdered her design???). I can't believe Soma at least didn't make it in, a character with so many moveset options? Good for Cornell being in though, nice seeing the N64 characters actually acknowledged and he had one of the better story modes too. Speaking of characters, who thought it was a good idea to do a game that was functionally a big ol' celebration of the series with character designs that so drastically changed most characters into being unrecognizable? The Death Note expy jokes are played out, but they're so true nonetheless. The worst thing is still Maria's story mode and especially her interaction with Sypha, though. I cannot stress enough how bad it is. It makes me feel embarrassed just thinking about it lmfao

[thunderjolt]

strider (2014)

immediately after playing the nes game, i thought to myself: "hey! there's another exploratory strider game and it's been burning a hole in my steam library for 10 years!" well, i finally got around to it. strider 2014 is an interesting beast. overall, i think it's decent.

metroidvanias are a genre i'm very particular about. i think there are a few main pillars: map design, exploration, backtracking, movement, and combat. why don't we run through each real quick, in order of how impressed i was by them.

movement: the movement in strider is excellent. there are many ways to optimize it and tons of little tricks to use. you don't start the game feeling slow or useless either: this game starts you off with essentially the full moveset from strider 2, making you feel fast and powerful from the jump and only increasing your potency from there. the seamless transitions between most screens also result in traversal feeling super smooth. it's not frictionless though, and the movement does require player skill and input to get the most out of. definitely a highlight.

combat: this is really intertwined with movement. as i said earlier, this game starts you off super strong, and you just get stronger. that feeling of mowing through armies of dudes with just one giant laser sword is palpable here. yet still, the game doesn't play itself; you'll need the requisite amount of finesse and quick thinking to get through quickly, but the game gives you the tools to do so, and as you develop that skill it just becomes more and more satisfying

backtracking: some metroidvanias don't have room design i find conducive to backtracking. many of the games on the "-vania" side have enemies that simply require too much time and attention to defeat. personally, i believe that after a certain point in a metroidvania, rooms of enemies earlier in the game should be dispatched without much thought. this is the case in strider, and the game is better for it. you will still struggle with enemies that match the part of the game you're in, but otherwise getting back through areas is smooth thanks to smart upgrade design.

exploration: this is where i think things get a little weaker. the rewards for exploration in this game are there, but they are relatively few in number and don't really inspire curiosity. a problem a lot of people seem to have with super metroid is that its secrets tend to only reward the player with say, a paltry missile tank for their efforts. i don't really have an issue with that, though. even if the reward doesn't stack up, a map littered with little puzzle boxes to pique the player's interest and test their mechanical skills or knowledge is far better than one without. sadly, this game is just lacking in things that make the player interested in the world, and it's a shame.

map design: it's boring. this is what really kills an otherwise strong game for me. both the map (as in the world the player traverses) and the map (as in the thing that guides the player) are poorly designed in my opinion. the game world is not interconnected in an organic or satisfying way, and largely feels like a disjointed assortment of linear challenge rooms. this problem is patched up by fast travel points across the map, to hide the fact that you're mostly good in straight lines, but it's far from a solution. the map itself gives you extremely precise information on the layout and terrain of the world, where you can go to get rewards with your new upgrades, and a huge arrow with a number telling you your exact distance from the next objective. the game never respects the player's intelligence long enough to let them explore the map themselves, possibly because the developers knew they didn't have anything interesting. it's a real shame.

so overall, a mixed bag. i think the game is pretty fun overall, and it goes pretty cheap, so if you're in the mood to slash some shit up as a ninja in a metroidvania package, you could do worse.

[veebs-hates-video-games]

Recent attempts to find something my brain is willing to stick with for any significant amount of time at once aren't going super well.

The good news is I made a little more progress on history mode in Fire Emblem Warriors when I got burned out on Shadows of Valentia. Once every several months I go back to it and do a little bit more, and any year now I'll either run out of stuff to do in it or finally decide I've had enough. In the meantime it's nice to check off a few more things in my spreadsheet for it every now and then.

I did a few more runs of Little Noah: Scion of Paradise too after not having touched it in like a year and a half. It's always really fun at first for a little while, but then I feel like I'm not making much progress very quickly and lose motivation. I do still really like the Bravely Default-adjacent character designs and some of the gameplay mechanics, but something about it never quite clicks for long enough for me.

I finally gave in and started Project X Zone instead of waiting until I'm done with playing/replaying all the Xeno games like I'd planned (at least partly because the older ones are being emulated on my computer, and it's a lot harder for me to see that screen than one I can hold up close). I love how ridiculous a crossover it is between so many things, and the plot is completely nonsense, and there are fun interactions between characters who shouldn't even know each other, and the animations and stuff are really over the top.

On the other hand it's an extremely mid SRPG and getting really tedious really quickly. The tutorial barely exists and doesn't teach you about how like 90% of the things in the game work and expects you to dig through menus to read like 7000 separate info screens explaining it all instead. I still have no idea how a bunch of really basic/important stuff works because my brain decided reading that much at once was bad and I haven't made it through it all.

On the other hand none of that matters because the game seems trivially easy so far, and while the map layouts initially seem more interesting than SoV's they really aren't. It's terrible at presenting a lot of the relevant information, you have very few ways of interacting with the map or units on it, and so far like a dozen chapters in it doesn't even matter that it's a pain in the ass to check enemy attack ranges because nothing ever kills me anyway. We'll see how much longer I last.

And then after getting a little burned out on slogging through too many maps of that one over the past few days I decided to give Three Houses one more chance to see if it at least doesn't make me motion sick/give me migraines anymore. Jury's still out on that, and I don't think we're ever going to find out because I forgot how much I don't like running around the monastery even aside from that being the part that makes me sick. The UI also leaves something to be desired. I like the characters and the world and stuff, but when it comes to actually playing it as a game I definitely have bigger problems with it than I did with SoV, which I at least made it most of the way through before getting frustrated. Also call me a hater but Byleth is easily my least favorite avatar character out of the FE games I've played.

The quest continues for something I can actually play without my brain protesting.

[vincess-princess]

war?

Fandom: Motley Crue Characters, pairings: minor Nikki Sixx\Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Tommy Lee, Mick Mars Rating: Teen so far, may change in the future Warnings: displays of extreme radiation poisoning, violence, unreality (so far) Summary: The boys go into a post-nuclear war-themed quest room, but is it really just a quest room?

idea by @dopefreshprincess, thank you so much for giving me inspiration <3

Chapter 1/?

Word count: 8059

“Wow!” Tommy looked around, eyes sparkling with excitement. “This is sick!”

Nikki did not reply, as did the others were gaping silently at the landscape extending in front of them. Escape room managers always tried to assure them of the reality of the experience, but the layout of all the escape rooms they visited before could be usually proved fake, sometimes by smallest of details. Not this one, though: the desolate, ravaged, post-nuclear war landscape looked uncannily real. They could even feel the hot breeze in their hair, bits of sand carried by it scraping their skin.

A desert sprawled in front of them, the ceiling that imitated the sky painted pale orange, no clouds, the lamp replacing the sun emitting so much heat Nikki could already feel droplets of sweat sliding down his back. Here and there bare, skeletal-looking trees stretched their branches up towards the sky – they barely reach the group’s waists, but trailed along the ground for meters. The only other plant around was spiky grey grass with frail stems. Nikki kneeled in front of one of them, trying to understand how it managed to grow through a completely dry, hardened soil. Wait, that’s a fake, he reminded himself. It was probably made of rubber and just stuck into the ground, it didn’t need no water.

Nikki reached out and tried to tear the plant out of the ground, but quickly drew his hand back with a hiss. The stem had little hair-thin thorns, sharper than needles. A few of them pierced through his skin and got stuck in his finger. Fuck, those sure as hell weren’t rubber.

“Huh?” Vince turned his head, distracted from fascinatedly observing the location by Nikki’s hiss. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Nikki said quickly, knowing how sharp-tongued Vince was. “Just got a splinter.”

“Are you gonna survive?” Vince inquired in a serious tone, but with a sly smile on his lips.

“I hope so,” Nikki muttered, trying to be angry at the mocking smile Vince shot him and failing miserably. “Careful with these things. They’re damn realistic.”

“Told you, these guys make the best escape rooms I’ve ever been in,” Mick said. He was the only one to remain relatively unimpressed, though his gaze lingered on the sand dunes a little bit longer than needed. “It’s gonna be a real survival quest, so buckle up.”

“Ain’t no quest too hard for us,” Tommy grinned. “Let’s set a world record on this one, lads.”

“Hell yeah!” Vince joined him, eyes sparkling. “The harder, the more fun!”

Mick rolled his eyes in exasperation. “That’s why you two absolutely can’t have nice things. You’re on a thin fucking ice, Sixx,” he added, side-eyeing Nikki.

“Hey, I haven’t even said anything!”

“I know you well enough.”

Nikki huffed with annoyance, but purely to keep face. He knew, of course, that Mick was right.

“Are we setting off at last?” Tommy was practically jumping with excitement. “Come on, come on, you snails!” he waved his hands in an inviting gesture. “Could you speed up a little?”

“We ain’t in a hurry,” Mick cut him down, but carefully stepped off the platform that took them to the location. The platform rose up swiftly and disappeared in the sky. Nikki traced it with his eyes. They would not be able to call it back, only in an extreme emergency, and the level of emergency was going to be decided by the quest room staff, who were supposed to watch the travelers constantly. In reality, though, when Nikki peeked into the security room half of the cameras weren’t working, and the only guard there was too busy playing his new Nintendo switch. So they couldn’t really count on staff; from now on they had to complete the quest to get out. Usually it added to the thrill, but now Nikki’s guts felt uneasy at the thought.

“Hm.” Mick stomped his foot on the ground. “The sand is very thin. We shouldn’t have any problem walking.”

“Then let’s walk!” Vince called, fidgeting in his place. “I wanna see the destroyed city replica! Is it gonna have real radiation there?”

“You ask me? Boy, I’ve never been here. I can only tell you what Chris told me, and he never mentioned it. Everything is possible. Do you even know where the city is?”

“It’s gonna show up eventually anyway, no?” Vince tilted his head. “The quest zone is not that big.”

“Why are you so sure?” Mick raised an eyebrow. Nikki could feel frustration radiating off him. He probably wanted to make every second of this adventure worthwhile instead of speedrunning it. “Besides, you ain’t getting to no goddamn city without supplies and gear.”

“Aren’t they in the backpacks?” Vince frowned, then pulled his backpack off his back. The easiness with which Vince tossed it around was suspicious, like it carried no weight whatsoever.

Nikki weighed his own backpack with his arm and a cold shiver ran down his spine. How could he not notice how light it was?

Meanwhile, Vince had already opened his bag, and his eyebrows arched in surprise.

“There ain’t nothing there!”

“The hell-“ Nikki pulled at the zip and tore the backpack open. His bad feeling proved right - it was empty.

“Mine too!” Tommy shoved his hand inside, feeling the material up as if trying to find secret pockets there. The thin, chip fabric of the backpack couldn’t hide any pockets within it even with the most intricate design.

“Same thing”, Mick pursed his lips, having checked his. “Shit’s getting interesting.”

“The hell we’re gonna do without supplies? We are in a desert!” Tommy exclaimed, throwing his backpack to the ground with frustration. “We paid for an empty backpack?!”

“What, the quest suddenly too tough for ya?” Mick snorted, but then his face softened at Tommy’s helpless expression. “Relax, kid. They ain’t gonna let their clients die. We’ll probably find supplies along the way.”

“They probably aren’t gonna just lie there in the middle of a desert, though,” Nikki said. He could understand Tommy’s disappointment – the quest from the average difficulty just switched to expert, and Tommy was never the one to enjoy meticulous resource-gathering instead of fighting and cracking codes. He, however, didn’t seem to share Tommy’s feelings – instead, he could feel anticipation building up in his chest. This was gonna be a real test of character, and he was gonna show everyone he could pass it. Especially Vince.

“No shit, Sixx,” Tommy murmured, still worked-up, but relaxing slightly. “Then where the hell are we supposed to find them? We don’t even have a map.”

“Hey, quit whining,” Vince joined in. He didn’t seem to be upset in a slightest, though his flippant smile disappeared from his lips. “Nikki is right. We gotta find a city or some settlements. They must be full of lost stuff. And we’ll get a shelter from the heat.” He wiped sweat off his forehead, caught Nikki’s gaze and smiled with corners of his mouth. When he turned away, Nikki smiled back.

“Well, I’ll look at y’all after a couple of hours walking through the desert,” Tommy muttered indignantly, but didn’t continue his rant. He went to a big rock a few feet away and plopped onto it with a grim expression. Mick, Nikki and Vince exchanged looks.

“Okay, so what are we doing now?” Vince asked in a low voice. “I’m already thirsty. Where’s that city of theirs? Mick?”

“Don’t ask me,” Mick waved his hand. “I haven’t been here before, remember? I just know that it exists. I don’t think it’s that far away, though. The zone can’t be bigger than a day or two of walking. The building didn’t look that big to me from the outside, at least.”

“These plants probably have some water in them, like cactuses,” Nikki nodded at the grey spiky grass. “You could try sucking on them-“

“No, thanks, I’m not that desperate,” Vince interrupted him, rolling his eyes. “So what, we’re looking for a city?”

“Well, you’d rather stay here?” Mick raised his eyebrow. “No? Good. I swear, a little bit more of this senseless talk and I’m leaving without you.” He turned his back to them and headed forward, not sparing them a single look.

“Why is he so pissy?” Vince muttered to Nikki.

“Angry because of the supplies?” Nikki shrugged in response and looked back at Tommy, who was still sitting on the rock with his back turned to the rest of the world. He seemed to hunch, looking at something on the ground. “Hey, T-bone! We’re leaving!”

“Uh-huh,” Tommy murmured, not paying them any attention. What, was he refusing to come with them?

Well, that was getting ridiculous.

“T-bone!” Nikki approached him and not so gently slapped him on the shoulder. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” Tommy looked up at Nikki distractedly. “Nik, do you think this map is supposed to have enemies?”

“I’m gonna be disappointed if it doesn’t” Nikki grinned. “But probably not in the middle of a desert. Maybe in the city. But we’d be supposed to find weapons for them, wouldn’t we?”

“Yeah,” Tommy nodded and rose up from his rock. “Where we going?”

“Looking for the city,” Vince said from behind Nikki’s back. “We’re pretty sure it’s somewhere close.”

“You’re sure,” Tommy made a dissatisfied face. “Okay, if you’re so sure, let’s go there.”

“You’re such a pain in the ass today,” Vince told him, but with no malice in his voice. “How’d you survive in a real apocalypse? Y’know, when there are no supplies lying around, prepared specifically for you?”

“Well, there ain’t gonna be no apocalypse in my lifetime,” Tommy shook his head, picked up his backpack and headed after Mick, who was already a tiny silhouette against the orange skies and seemingly had no intention of waiting for them.

The thin layer of sand was easy to walk on, and their heavy boots prevented them from getting sand between their toes. What they weren’t preventing them from, however, was the heat. The lamp imitated the sun a little bit too well; as it traveled across the sky (Nikki wondered if it was fixed on a rope or if some mechanism did the moving), it became hotter and hotter. Soon their jackets were off, and their t-shirts were soaking wet.

“How long has it been? Two hours?” Vince asked, fanning himself with his stupid cowboy hat that Nikki hadn’t managed to talk him out of wearing. “I swear, if we don’t find water soon, I’m gonna drink my own piss.”

“I can offer you another, much more nutritious fluid-“ Nikki was interrupted by a backpack flung at his face and barely managed to duck in time. “Hey, you could’ve just said no!”

“I’d rather die of thirst,” Vince promised gloomily, but before he turned away, Nikki caught a glimpse of a smile on his face. He sped up to catch up with Mick. Nikki didn’t want to march forward alone, so he slowed his pace, waiting for Tommy.

“What kind of enemies do you think we’re gonna encounter?” Tommy asked him, somewhat anxious.

“No clue, dude,” Nikki said carelessly. “Some mutated rabid rats? Mad scavengers? I hope it’ll be mad scavengers. The robots we were shooting last time were too predictable.”

“And the weapons?” Tommy didn’t seem relieved by his words in a slightest.

“I hope paintball guns – so you can see when you hit someone, y’know. Laser guns are too glitchy.”

“You think it will be just actors?” Tommy shot him a glance. Nikki frowned. Why was he so worked-up anyway? They were on a quest, they were supposed to have fun, not worry.

“Of course. Do you think they’re gonna release actual animals on us or something? That’s just a game.” Nikki shook his head at Tommy when he opened his mouth again, no longer willing to answer weird questions. “Come on, let’s catch up with those two. Or they’ll find loot earlier than us and will take all the alcohol.” He grabbed Tommy’s arm and pulled him forward. Tommy followed, like a puppet obeying every twitch of its master’s fingers.

Half an hour later, literally nothing changed. The sky was the same sickish orange; the sand was crumpling under their boots with barely audible crunching sounds. The tension was hanging in the air like fog, enveloping their little group whole, getting more and more thick. The frown on Mick’s face deepened with every their step.

“I swear, if I knew how fucking big it would be…” he began.

“Hey, hey, no need to apologize,” Nikki interrupted him.

“I wasn’t,” Mick flashed him an irritated glance. “I wanted to say I’d tell Chris to stuff his recommendations up his ass. I fucking knew he’s a survival games junkie. He gets a kick out of harsh conditions. Unlike me.” He stopped so suddenly Tommy almost collided with him. “That’s it. We’re making camp here.”

“Not that we have anything to make that camp with,” Tommy murmured, but wilted under Mick’s stern gaze. “You can sit on your backpack,” he suggested hastily. “Or on that rock over there-“

“Um, guys,” Vince, who wandered away during their conversation, spoke up from where he was bending over to the rock Tommy offered Mick to sit on, “you need to see this.”

“What’s that?” Mick shuffled towards him. When his gaze landed on the rock, his eyebrows flew up. “Holy shit.”

Mick and Vince’s troubled faces evoked a bad feeling in Nikki’s gut. The feeling of wrongness that hatched in his stomach ever since they discovered the backpacks were empty raised its head again, making him shiver. He almost didn’t step forward to look at the rock, almost turned away. Almost.

Run, the rock said in uneven, shaky handwriting, probably done with chalk, probably in a hurry. Run.

“What the hell?.. Nikki raised his head to meet Mick’s gaze, knowing he had no explanation for this, but still nurturing a stupid little spring of hope that the smartest of them, the oldest of them would be able to explain it. But Mick’s face showed nothing but bewilderment. And… what was that?

Tommy approached them quietly from the back, read the inscription and inhaled sharply through his teeth with a hiss. He said nothing. It was weird, but not weirder than this entire fucking thing.

“It’s a joke, right?” Vince said in a shaky voice. “It must be a joke.”

“I’d love to tear off the arms of whoever wrote this and shove them up their ass,” Mick muttered disgruntledly. “Not funny at all.”

Nikki just nodded, kneeling in front of the rock. He rubbed the word with his thumb, wanting to see if it could be erased easily. His thumb got a little dirty, but the writing remained intact. Nikki licked his finger and tried again, to no avail.

“That’s not chalk,” Mick said, frowning. “It would erase. Why the hell didn’t Chris tell me about this shit? Maybe he did it?..”

“I don’t think so,” Tommy said suddenly. “It looks old.”

“And the sky is orange here, do you think it really is in real life?” Mick cut him off angrily. Tommy bit his lip and stared at the ground, fidgeting with something in his hands. “It’s probably just a prank by another visitor. Well, good job, asshole, now you’ve got everyone worked up.” He turned his back to the rock. “Dunno about you, but I’m not gonna stand around this goddamn rock all day. We still need to get supplies somehow.”

“Yeah, right,” Nikki nodded, getting up and lining up with Mick. “Let’s go, guys. It’s getting late.”

“I’ve heard deserts get super cold at night,” Vince remarked. “We better find a shelter by the time the sun sets.”

They set off again, but the decisiveness that floated in the air when they just entered faded. Instead the tension and frustration returned, and there was a new one now - fear. The latter was completely illogical, Nikki tried to persuade himself, but all in vain – the icky cold lump in his stomach remained, gaining more thorns the more Nikki thought about the writing on the rock. Fuck, he definitely needed a drink. He could only hope the supplies would have alcohol – they usually did, allegedly for medical purposes.

Nikki didn’t know how much time passed. Maybe half an hour, maybe more. It was hard to determine with the sky the same orange color, the “sun” invisible behind thick clouds. Eventually, though, it began to get colder – Nikki only realized that when he caught Tommy shiver. Already sulky, Tommy now looked like a ruffled chick that just fell out of the nest.

Nikki was already thinking about suggesting calling it a night and making camp where they were when Vince broke the gloomy silence.

“There’s something ahead.”

Nikki squinted, staring forward. Against the sky, now reddish as the “sun” was setting, was a group of silhouettes.

“Those might be just mountains,” Mick said, barely trying to cover the exhaustion in his voice.

“They’re too upright for mountains,” Vince shook his head. “The sides are too flat. And anyway, that would be better than spending the night in the middle of a fucking desert. My throat is dry as a fucking sandpaper.”

“Whatever,” Mick threw his hands up. “We ain’t got nowhere else to go anyway.”

They headed towards the shadows in the distance. Although none of them was ready to say it, reaching something after an entire day full of sand already felt like a small victory. They might even find a cave to sleep in there, Nikki mused. Now even a rough rocky mountain soil was better than getting sand in their asses.

But as they drew closer it became clear those were no mountains. Though destroyed and decayed, those were buildings. Soon they reached a road – battered and covered in sand, but a road nevertheless.

“Hell yeah!” Vince smiled triumphantly. “Told ya we’re getting there!”

“Okay, okay, don’t forget to mark this date down. It’s not often that you turn out to be right,” Mick grumbled, but relief in his voice was obvious. Vince rolled his eyes, but did not say anything in return – maybe didn’t want to spoil the mood. Even Tommy cheered up. They sped up to reach the city before the night set.

It turned out to be farther than they imagined, and when they did reach the city, it was already night. Just as Vince said, the heat was soon replaced by freezing wind, so they weren’t feeling picky and headed to the first building on their way. The left half of it lay in ruins, concrete mixed with metal, crooked metal rods sticking out of the walls that were still standing. Nikki touched the concrete – it was cold and coated his fingertips in dust. The right half, though, remained relatively unharmed, apart from shattered windows. It even still had a door intact.

“With our luck, I won’t be surprised if the door is locked,” Mick muttered as he touched the door handle with uncertainty. It easily yielded under his touch. He carefully pushed the door.

A musty smell enveloped them, the dust in the air making them cough. It was dark inside, and the windows didn’t provide enough light to make out details – the night was moonless, and there were no stars in the sky, - but this just made the image more uncannily real. How did they make the dust covering the floor look like it hasn’t been touched in ages while the building probably had visitors the very night before them?

“I can’t fucking see anything,” Mick grumbled somewhere ahead. “Should’ve brought headlights.”

“There must be at least some loot in here,” Nikki tried to cheer him up. “Maybe there’ll be flashlights.”

“There might just as likely not be any,” Mick sighed. “But at least we won’t have to sleep in a freezing wind. Though it’s not much warmer here either, those goddamn windows-“

A loud crash followed by a yelp interrupted him. Mick and Nikki shot each other alerted looks and sprinted towards the source of the sound. In the corner of the room, there was a hole covered by a thin sheet of metal – apparently not strong enough to hold a man’s- Vince burst into the room, waving around a metal rod in his hand that he probably pulled out of a broken wall, - not strong enough to hold Tommy’s body weight. Nikki plopped onto his knees and peered into the hole. Vince grabbed him by the collar, to make sure he wouldn’t fall. It was so dark down there they couldn’t even see the floor.

“Drummer, you alright?” Mick called out anxiously, staring into the darkness of the hole intensely. A second of silence felt like an hour, Nikki’s heart skipped a bit. Then Tommy spoke from down there.

“Yeah… I think.” They listened intently to the rustling and creaking from down there as Tommy tried to get on his own two feet. “I’m al- oh, shit!” something heavy fell onto a metal sheet with a loud clatter.

“T-bone?” Nikki called again, but received no response. A little lump of anxiety in his stomach reminded of itself again as it began to unravel. “Tom, fucking say something!”

“Fuck,” Tommy finally hissed. “My knee hurts as shit.”

“Broken?” Vince tried to catch a look of Tommy, but the view of the hole was obstructed by two dark messy heads.

A few pained breaths later, Tommy replied. “No, I don’t… think so.”

“Can you stand?” Nikki jumped up, looking around the room for a ladder, or a rope, or, at least, a wooden bar to put into the hole. But the room was barren, apart from a few chairs looking like they would turn to dust the moment they’re touched, ruined bookshelves with burned black books scattered across the floor, and a broken computer standing on the only remaining desk.

The desk had three drawers and a cabinet. The cabinet was locked. The drawers were mostly empty, one even had a couple of dead cockroaches in it. Nikki almost overlooked a little cylindrical object in the corner of the lowest drawer. He carefully touched it. The surface felt like cheap plastic.

Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a flashlight. Nikki fidgeted with it for a bit and found a button, which he carefully pressed. The first couple of seconds it wasn’t lighting up Nikki’s heart skipped a bit; but then a weak ray of light shone through the dirty glass.

“Guys! Look what I found!” He dashed back to the hole, where Mick and Vince still stood, quietly discussing something. Tommy’s voice from down there joined them occasionally.

“A flashlight?” Mick raised an eyebrow. “And that’s all?”

“Well, do you want a stage projector instead?” Nikki snapped back. “This is better than nothing. Tommy, can you walk?”

“Not sure,” came a muffled reply. “Gimme a sec… Ouch.”

“So no?” Nikki frowned.

“Well, I can stand, but it hurtsб” Tommy reported. “Not sure about walking. I can’t see a thing, and there’s so much debris here, I don’t wanna break a leg on one of them.”

“Well, then I’ve got you covered, pal.” Nikki showed him a flashlight. Tommy squeezed his eyes, trying to make out what Nikki was holding. Then he beamed.

“Man, that’s great! It’s definitely a part of the quest, so we’re on the right track! Give it to me, I’ll try to look around.” He caught the flashlight thrown by Nikki. “Eh, man, they could have put better props here. This one looks like it’s from a gas station.”

“What, you think they would give you top-tier gear here?” Mick raised his eyebrow. “Be thankful for what you have.”

“Hey, don’t be so bitter,” Vince stood up for Tommy. “For all the money they get, they could have bought better props as well. This thing looks like it may kick the bucket at any moment.”

Nikki decided not to listen to their banter anymore. “Look for a ladder, or at least a rope,” he told Tommy and moved away from the hole to walk one more time around the room in case he missed something. He tried to sit in a chair, but it cracked so threateningly under him he decided not to tempt fate. Then he turned to bookshelves. Books were often used to hide clues; maybe that was the case here as well?

However, most books were burnt and battered. Nikki opened one, but the pages were so dark the text was unintelligible. Some of them were glued together, others torn. It was just another fucking prop, Nikki realized, flinging the book into the wall in frustration. Just a waste of a good book-

The book crashed into the wall and fell onto the floor, pages flying around. One of them was significantly lighter than the others. It landed right next to Nikki’s feet, as though inviting him to pick it up.

Well, Nikki rolled his eyes, for sure that wasn’t supposed to be a clue or something like that, not at all.

He picked up the piece of paper and turned it upside down. On it a few numbers were written, in ornate, neat handwriting. Must be a password or something. But for what?

Nikki turned around, and his gaze fell on a seemingly dysfunctional computer. Why did he assume it was dysfunctional first hand?

Nikki carefully touched the keyboard sprinkled with dust. They really did a good job making everything look old and abandoned. He pressed the space key, then ran his fingers along the keys, pressing many at once – no reaction. Then he reached out for the turn-on button. Also no reaction.

Oh well, it wasn’t going to be as easy as this, after all. Nikki stuffed the paper piece in his pocket and returned to the hole, where Mick and Vince conversed lazily. Judging by the occasional streaks of light landing on the walls, Tommy was exploring down there.

“Oh, hey, guys, it’s pretty nice in here!” he shouted, attracting their attention. “Is that a fucking potbelly stove?”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Well, I’ve only seen those in movies but it does look like one. And what are those…” his voice quietened for a few seconds as he was fussing with something. “Guys! There are sleeping bags here!”

“Really?!” Vince would have dove into the hole headfirst if not for Mick who grabbed him unceremoniously by the collar. “Hey, what the fuck, man?!”

“Who the fuck is gonna drag you two up then? My back won’t let me, you want Sixx alone to do it?”

“Well, if there are sleeping bags, then there must also be a ladder or something,” Vince muttered, ashamed. “Isn’t it clear that’s a checkpoint?”

“No, it isn’t,” Mick cut him off. “Not until we find a lad-“

“I found rope!” Tommy’s jubilant voice rang through the building. Mick, stopped mid-sentence, pursed his lips.

“Hey, Mick, do you think I should start a notebook to mark down when I’m being right?” Vince patted his shoulder, grinning. Mick shook his hand off.

“Bring it here,” Nikki said, looking around for something to fix the rope on. The table seemed sturdy and heavy enough, but they all were grown adult men as well. Nikki headed over to the table and tried to move it, to no avail. Maybe it was screwed to the floor for this very purpose.

“Hey, we can fix the rope to the table over here, if it’s long enough,” he suggested.

“Might work.” Mick glanced towards it and nodded. “Though I’m not a keen rope-climber…”

“Me neither,” Nikki tried to reassure him. “I always failed at it on the P.E. lessons”

“You had rope climbing on your P.E. lessons?” Mick raised an eyebrow. “Wow. Schools sure have geared up since I graduated.”

“We also jumped a bench,” Nikki recalled, “and did pull-ups on a bar. Oh how I hated it.”

“Y’all are spoiled,” Mick murmured. “All we had were a ball and the teacher’s whistle. A volleyball net, if the school was fancy.”

“Hate to interrupt your sweet chatter.” Vince suddenly appeared behind their backs. He already held the end of the rope in his hands. “But if I don’t get into a sleeping bag within five minutes, I’m gonna riot. You checked the table?”

“Yep, seems trustworthy.”

“Mick, your time to shine,” Vince offered him, the only one among them knowing how to tie a reliable knot, the end of the rope.

“You forgot a magic word,” Mick grumbled but kneeled in front of the table. “There are rope traces on this table leg already, so it must be the right way.”

“Are all clients supposed to hurt themselves falling through the floor?” Nikki wondered, kneeling beside Mick. He loved watching his rope work, though never managed to do it quite like him.

“You wanted adventure, you got it,” Mick replied, his fingers quickly working.

“Well, yeah, we all know it’s just an imitation,” Nikki shrugged. “A pretty good one, but still.”

“There wouldn’t be one if all those people didn’t actually want it to come true, even in part.”

“Well, I don’t,” Nikki resented. “I don’t want the world to fucking burn to the ground. And all those people don’t, too. They just want to… I dunno. Feel like movie protagonists for a while?”

“Movie protagonists always have a purpose. They don’t go out into the wild just because they love the wild that much.” Mick finished the knot and got up, cutting their conversation short. Nikki tried to follow him but hit his head on the tabletop.

“Ouch!” he fell back on his knees, checking his head for damage. Just as he reached for the sore spot on his head, he noticed a wire that was running along the wall of the cabinet and sliding into a hole on the floor. The wire was connected to the computer. Oh, so they need to fix it in the basement for the computer to start working, Nikki realized. That the computer was supposed to be turned on he had no doubt, or there wouldn’t be a password in the book.

“You alright?” Vince asked when Nikki crawled from under the table and got up. “We don’t need any more injuries here.”

“I’ll survive,” Nikki promised. They headed towards the hole where Tommy already stood with the flashlight, waiting for them.

“Wait a sec, I’m gonna move all those debris away,” he hurried to clear the floor under the hole, stumbled on something and hissed in pain. “Shit! I hope there’s a first aid kit somewhere here.”

“If you still can walk, then it’s not that serious,” Mick told him. “Not a fracture or a broken bone at least. Gonna heal in a couple of days.”

“Yeah, but where are we gonna get these couple of days?” Nikki murmured so that Tommy wouldn’t hear him. “Our time here is limited. We can’t just waste it waiting for him to recover.”

“What are you gonna do then, send him back?” Mick snapped. “Let him hobble through the desert alone, with no supplies?”

“Well, no, of course not,” Nikki mumbled ashamedly. “But we could… I dunno… investigate the location while he heals his ankle?”

“Yeah, and he totally won’t jump after us on one leg the whole way,” Mick said sarcastically, diminishing Nikki to a puddle on the floor. He didn’t bring the topic up anymore.

Vince was the first to descend, carefully sliding down the rope. Tommy, beaming, waved the flashlight around, demonstrating the room so proudly he as though had decorated it himself. A smile slowly widened on Vince’s face.

“Come look!” he called them. Nikki climbed down the rope so fast he burned the skin on his palms. Mick wasn’t that eager to follow; quite on the contrary, he stood up there looking around for a few seconds and then hurried out of sight.

“The hell he went to-“ Tommy began, but Mick was already back, dragging something clanging with him.

“We are gonna attract the entire local wildlife with the light and the voices,” he explained, breathing heavily. “Better cover up.”

“Oh, Mick, c’mon!” Vince laughed. “Who are we gonna attract? Actors are all at home sleeping at this time.”

“Some of them work night shifts,” Mick reminded as he carefully lowered his legs into the hole and wrapped them around the rope. He grasped the metal sheet he brought and drew it over the hole, leaving only a small crack. “And some of them aren’t people,” he finished once his feet were firmly on the ground.

Vince huffed, but did not continue the argument. And Nikki was thankful to him for that.

The shelter they accidentally discovered was small but neat. It was a little bit warmer here, without the wind, but the walls still couldn’t really protect from the cold. They were probably drywall, but they did look appropriate for the location - like old, weathered-down concrete. Even the smell was authentic, dusty and heavy. Four sleeping bags were laid out around the potbelly stove in the center, looking old but functioning. A pipe ran down one of the walls with a very convenient tap in the middle. Every now and then a drop of water fell down from the tap onto a small wet spot on the floor. In the corner there were some boxes piled up on top of one another, and in the other – wooden crate. The entire location was poorly lit by groups of green, toxic-looking mushrooms in the corners and on the ceiling. They looked so real Nikki had to grab and feel the material of one to confirm it was rubber.

“Were you in a real apocalyptic setting, this one could have burned off the skin on your fingers,” Mick muttered.

“Glad we aren’t,” Nikki said, words coming out a little bit strained. “Though there probably wouldn’t really be mushrooms glowing with radiation. Is that even possible? Won’t it just kill them, like any other living thing?”

“Nature always finds a way,” Mick said, kneeling on front of the potbelly stove and peeping inside. “Jeez, this one belongs in a museum. And we need coal or wood to light it up.”

“There were carton boxes in the corner,” Nikki nodded towards them. “What about a lighter? I hope we won’t have to use a flint or something.”

“I have one,” Tommy said from the corner where he examined the crate, fingers carefully running over the lid. He “I had to take out my sigs, but they didn’t notice the lighter.”

“That’s technically cheating,” Vince said lazily, already sprawled on a sleeping bag. “But practically you just saved us a lot of trouble.” He sat up, his shoulders twitching from cold. “Damn, it’s freezing here. Gimme the lighter.”

Tommy threw it over his shoulder in Vince’s direction, missing by a few feet at least. Vince caught it nevertheless – probably the only time his baseball school team skills were put to use.

“Don’t burn the entire basement,” Mick advised half-heartedly as Vince trudged to the boxes in the corner. Vince grumbled something unintelligible in reply.

The cracking sound from the other corner distracted them.

“Guys, I think I found supplies,” Tommy said, holding up the lid of the crate that he had just opened.

“What’s there?” Mick and Nikki rushed towards him. Vince looked at the box he held in his hands for a second, dropped it and joined them. “Any food?!”

“Well, those feel grainy,” Tommy brought a plain fabric bag to his eyes, dug his fingers into its sides. “Cereals, probably.” He put it back, picked up some other package and shook it. “Those sound like crackers.”

“Three cans with corn,” Nikki reported, rummaging in the other end of the crate. “And, uh, ramen,” He dug out a familiar-looking box. At least they removed the plastic wrapping that they have on in stores.

“Any fruit, veggies?” Vince peered over their shoulders. “No? Well, we aren’t gonna last long on such a diet.”

“We aren’t gonna stay here long either,” Nikki reminded him. “What did you expect from a post-apocalyptic setting, an all-you-can-eat buffet?”

“Nothing, man,” Vince retreated, “I’m just saying, we’ve seen plants and trees on our way here, some edible plants could as well survive too- uh, nevermind.”

“That’s all good and stuff, but where are we supposed to put them? I haven’t seen any plates here.”

“Over there, in the corner,” Mick headed to the farthest, most poorly lit corner of the basement, which Nikki overlooked at first, and with a clang pulled out a pot, rather old and battered, but seemingly without any holes. “But these need to be washed first, or we all will get poisoned.”

“I’m busy with the fire,” Vince immediately said, grabbing the box he dropped and holding it in front of himself in a protective gesture. “Tommy can do it. Or Nikki.”

“Guys, there’s something else beneath the food,” Tommy said, pulling out a yellow box with a black wire. “Some device?”

“Oh!” Mick’s face lit up for the first time during the day. “That’s a Geiger counter, if I’m not mistaken. Since we’re in a post-nuclear war wasteland, it’s gonna prove useful.”

“Does it work from the batteries?” Tommy turned it over in search of a switch. “Because there might be problems with electricity here.”

“It’s supposed to,” Mick took the box and examined it as well. “The limit for this one is 5000 mSv – uh, what are mSv? – and I have literally zero idea how dangerous it actually is. Did anyone read up on the theory before the quest?”

He received only confused mumbling in response.

“Do you think anyone else who completed this quest did?” Vince finally said defensively. “I’m pretty sure they weren’t experts on radiation either.”

“That does not excuse our ignorance,” Mick sighed. “Well, 5000 is a big number so if there is this much radiation, it’s not safe.”

They fell silent for a second, only Tommy kept rummaging in the crate. Finally, he fished out something with a victorious yell.

“Knew it would be here!” He waved a piece of paper in front of their faces. “Vince is right – they wouldn’t have given us this thing without explaining how it works. There are some numbers here – I guess radiation levels, but I can’t see them, it’s too dark.”

“Gimme,” Mick immediately snatched it from Tommy’s hands, receiving an indignant yelp in response. “Shit, I can’t see a thing either. Vince, what’s up with the fire?”

“This damn carton doesn’t want to burn,” Vince said from where he was kneeling in front of the potbelly stove. “It just chars.”

“Lord, why do I have to do everything myself,” Mick raised his eyes to the moldy ceiling. “Hold this and don’t let go for dear life,” he handed Vince the piece of paper. Vince pressed it to his chest in an overplayed protective gesture. A few curses later the carton finally caught fire from the lighter, and the flame started strengthening slowly but surely.

“Now, gimme.” Mick grabbed the paper and brought it closer to the fire, maybe a little bit too dangerously close. “Yeah, drummer was right. So, 2 mSv is what a person receives daily, 100 is what radiation workers receive in 5 years, 1000 causes cancer in 5% of people exposed… doesn’t sound too dangerous to me. 5000, though… kills a half.”

“Shit,” Vince commented laconically. “So anything above 1000 is a big no-no, we get it.”

“Pretty much,” Mick nodded. “How much is here, I wonder. Turn this thing on.”

Nikki reached out and pulled the switch. The arrow wandered a little over the bar, but never ventured into even remotely dangerous areas and finally stopped on 12 mSv.

“Well, that’s a little more than usual but still not much,” Mick concluded. “But we should be careful when advancing into the city. It’s supposed to have suffered a nuclear blast, and radiation will go up the closer we are to the center.”

“You think it will ever reach the limit on the counter?” Tommy asked, anxious.

“Don’t think so.” Mick waved his hand in the air. “But we gotta check it frequently, just in case.”

Nikki, who was silent all this time, finally spoke.

“I mean, it’s nice that y’all are enjoying yourself so much, but can we at least stop pretending that there’s actually radiation? This thing just shows what it’s programmed to show. There ain’t no radiation neither here nor in the city center. Where the hell would they get it from?”

Mick raised his eyes, examining Nikki with his piercing gaze. He wasn’t angry or disappointed – thoughtful, rather.

“Well,” he finally said a few seconds later, “there are two things to this. First – when in Rome, do as Romans do. Second – how do you know the radiation isn’t real?”

“How?” Nikki frowned, surprised by Mick’s answer. Mick’s, who was the most sensible of them all and the least prone to stupid illusions. “Because this ain’t real post-apocalyptic wasteland, and these walls are built out of drywall, the sun is a lamp and the mushrooms are made of rubber!”

“And what is radiation made of?” Mick asked. “No, really, how can you fake radiation well enough to deceive a Geiger counter? Because the counter is very real, we’ve been given those at school”.

“Well, then it’s programmed to show what it shows,” Nikki retorted. “And we can’t actually prove it’s not lying.”

“Nor that it is,” Mick replied. “Of course, this is all just a big game of pretend, Sixx. But it doesn’t matter that everything here is fake. We’re gonna take the counter with us anyway; even if it’s lying, its data will show us what places to avoid, since it’s been programmed, as you’re claiming. It was left here for a reason.”

“I guess,” Nikki sighed, turning away. He didn’t know how to explain that their interest and excitement was a little bit too fake in its genuineness. He knew how quests worked. He has completed them many times. A couple of riddles to solve, a couple of actors dressed as zombies to “kill” with laser guns. The ultimate satisfaction upon reaching the end – and after that, all-encompassing boredom again, again, until the next dose of adrenaline.

And this one is going to be just the same. Should be just the same.

Oh god, please let it be just the same.

“Anyway,” Mick broke the silence first. “I’m putting this thing in my backpack, but we’re gonna take it out regularly to check radiation level. Now, I don’t know what about you, but I’m hungry as hell, and the dishes question still stands.”

“Nikki should do it,” Vince said immediately, receiving an “et tu, Brute” look from Nikki. “Since he’s such a wet blanket.”

“Yep,” Tommy quickly counted the odds and sided with the right people. Nikki shot him a death glance. Tommy smiled sheepishly, but didn’t take his words back.

“Well, then go on, Sixx,” Mick handed him the pot, and Nikki wanted to put it on his friend’s head. With a loud bang. “We’ll sort out the rest of equipment while you’re busy.”

The water from the tap was cold, but seemed clean and only smelt a little of metal. Nikki rinsed the pot and the plates he was handed, not quite thoroughly, but the others were too hungry to notice. Meanwhile, Vince and Tommy dug out of the corner three empty plastic bottles, tastefully rumpled to look old, but nevertheless functional. As hard as they tried, they couldn’t find any cutlery, though. Apparently, desert rogues in a post-apocalyptic landscape were too down-to-earth to eat with spoons.

Soon they were sitting around the potbelly stove watching the water heat up terribly, terribly slowly. Nikki never paid attention to how much time it takes to heat a liter or two of water. This fire was no match to his electric kettle back in his apartment. But that was probably why kettles were made anyway.

“So, what do we have?” Mick spoke again. He didn’t seem to like the role of a leader much, but this quest was like no other – without him, the other three would have probably given up by now. “Three packages of cereals, four packs of crackers, three cans of corn which we’re gonna eat right now, a pack of noodles, the Geiger counter, a flashlight, sleeping bags, a pot and four plates and three water bottles.” He sighed. “And not a single medical item. That’s not much. Drummer, how’s your leg?”

“Hurts,” Tommy said honestly. “But like, more in a dull, pulsating way. I can bear it. I can walk even. I won’t make you wait, I promise.” He was nervous, his eyes darting between the other three, checking their reactions. “Just don’t send me back. This quest is so much fun, I don’t wanna miss it.”

“Okay, okay,” Mick raised his hand in a calming gesture. “Nobody was going to leave you behind anyway, right?” His eyes stopped on Nikki, and a frown was sent his way. Nikki huffed and turned away.

“Thanks, guys,” Tommy said with visible relief. “I took one for the team to find this amazing place, after all.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a hero,” Nikki reassured him distractedly. He was getting cold: he could feel how icy the floor was even through the fabric of the sleeping bag. “D’ya wanna light up the fire a little bit? It’s freezing here.”

“You can try, but I tell you, that won’t be enough,” Mick shook his head. He was sitting hugging himself on the sleeping bag, his feet propped up right against the stove for more warmth. “These boxes don’t burn hot enough. We’re gonna need coal or lighter fluid. Which we don’t have.”

“Sucks,” Vince murmured, for the first time in a while. That was strange – he was usually the most talkative one of the bunch, challenged only by Tommy.

Nikki leaned in to him, examining his face anxiously. Vince looked at him tiredly from under his eyelashes, but didn’t move back. His lips were of sickly bluish color, his fingers grappling the folds of his jacket, fruitlessly squeezing them together, unnaturally white.

“Are you alright?” Nikki whispered to him. Vince jerked his head towards him, a sarcastic retort ready to drop from his lips – but then, a tired sigh replaced it.

“Is that really so noticeable?” he whispered back. “I mean, you guys don’t seem to be bothered by it much. But Nikki, man, I’m gonna turn into an ice statue soon. I can’t feel my toes already.”

“Shit,” Nikki ran his gaze across the room again, hoping to find something, anything that could help. But, apart from the trash in the corners, discovered nothing new.

“Get in the sleeping bag,” he said finally. “At least put your feet in it. And take my jacket. Corn’s gonna be done soon, a nice hot meal will warm you up. And we’ll put together some kind of tea after that-”

“Hey, chill, man,” Vince smiled slightly. Nikki felt the tips of his ears warm up. “I ain’t taking your jacket, I don’t want you to freeze to death. Just… I dunno. My hands are so cold…”

“Here,” Nikki moved so close to him their knees bumped together, gently wrapped his hands over Vince’s wrists and guided his hands under his jacket, where his body warmth collected. They felt like ice chunks even through his t-shirt. Vince sighed with pleasure and closed his eyes. Nikki caught Tommy chuckle quietly and made a scary face towards him. Tommy raised his hands in pretended surrender.

Everything was okay. Everything was going to be okay.

The corn was consumed in tired silence. Thanks to the potbelly stove, the room did warm up slightly after a while, and a meal after a long day of walking made them all drowsy. By the rules, they should have left a guard up, but none of them dared to suggest it, afraid of being the one picked to watch. And what could get them in a basement of a destroyed building in the middle of a desert?

A lot, it turned out later, but that night they slept soundly, still happy in their ignorance.

[beautifulterriblequeen]

B2:S - Chapter 3

Much of this series will be about the differences and additions in the novel version, and how they contribute to my understanding of story canon. But there will be character appreciation, the odd theory and headcanon, and suchlike as well.

Here be Lujanne, Callum, Rayla, Ezran, Bait, and Soren goodness!

Spoilers for Book Two: Sky below.

Lujanne having excellent fitness for all her walking around the Moon Nexus, and she's so energetic that Callum has trouble keeping up with her! She seems like those active grandmas who almost never stop moving, who have a lifelong supply of endless stamina. It makes me wonder if Lujanne will need that level of fitness for some upcoming conflict.

Callum feeling really hungry over not eating grubs and then still deciding he'd rather be hungry. It makes me wonder all over again how Lujanne got to the point where she eats grubs, considering that other Moonshadow elves we know of back in the Silvergrove don't. I still love my hc that the giant leech ate all of Lujanne's moonberry bushes and she's taking her revenge. Whatever's going on there, Callum is definitely not at that point yet.

When Lujanne asks Callum how he knows she's real, he thinks to himself that he'd put up with just about anything from someone who was going to teach him magic. That's a great parallel and foreshadowing for Viren's student/master relationship with Aaravos! And it's telling that neither student gets exactly what they hoped to get. Lujanne doesn't actively teach Callum any spells, because she believes he can't learn Moon magic at all. Aaravos does offer Viren power, but it takes him to some very dark places - literally and figuratively - and the cost is terribly high.

Callum sees a moon shape among the ruins, and Lujanne explains that the Moonhenge layout is an intricate rune that uses the structures themselves as part of its symbols and power. That's apparently a thing even with ordinary Moonshadow villages like Hollow Wood in the east, which is the coolest idea I've seen in a while: city planning as magic runes!

Yes, that's the same shape as the pendants Ethari made for himself and Runaan. Protection? Home? Feelsiness? A sense of safety and belongnig for all cycles and seasons?

Wonder what this Moonhenge rune stands for, then, and how much of this landscape is included in that rune. I bet it's more than we think!

But it makes sense now, how toppling the stone pillars would disable the spell the druids would cast to connect with the Moon Nexus lake. Breaking the infrastructure of the Moonhenge breaks the rune.

There's a physical sensation involved with the visuals that Historia Viventem brings up! When that one ghostly druid walked through Callum, he felt icy cold. Like in ghost stories. I really wonder about what exactly Historia Viventem is doing when it activates. It shows truth, "what really happened here?", so it must have some kind of time-related element, maybe tied to how the moon always repeats the same cycles or something. But it also seems to draw on the spirits of any living people involved in the flashback, because Callum could physically feel that wispy shape passing through him. So very interesting!

Orrr... is that all wrong, and there's something else at work with this spell than time? Maybe the world beyond life and death can act as an imprint of the things that have happened in the living world, and the spell that Lujanne (and later Callum) casts taps into that place, with perfect recall. I'm looking really hard at the sentence that says "dozens of translucent elf ghosts" and "phantom Moonhenge" and "lost in their own world" here.

Lujanne says more here than in the show about the world beyond life and death, being her mysterious Moonshadow-mage self. She says that "beyond" and "between" might both apply to where this other plane of existence is, and she doesn't much care which. With all the relativity swirling around this place, and not much in the way of empiricism, it's sounding like perhaps multiple conflicting ideas might actually coexist in such a place, allowing more ideas to fit there than we might normally believe is possible. Which is a fascinating bit of worldbuilding. Basically, every headcanon anyone has ever had about the Moon Nexus could all be true at the same time, for all we know.

Oh oh oh, Callum coming in soft with a secret wish! He takes one look at the Moonhenge and immediately thinks of finding a way to see his mom again! Poor boy, my heart! I'd say that could be another interesting parallel with Viren, but then, who wouldn't hold that sentiment?

Oh my, is this another breath of life into Ye Olde Ley Lines headcanon? Lujanne mentioning the Nexuses again, so soon after talking about the runic design of the entire Moonhenge, makes me wonder if the six nexuses are in fact giant runes. On Earth, the places where ley lines cross are called nexuses, and there are those who believe those points got marked with ancient structures, like Stonehenge and many many others. If Xadia were crossed with magical lines which naturally formed nexus points where they met, and if powerful magical runes were built across those entire areas, well. That would be cool beans, fams. Can I smack a map of Xadia and release a spell like Luz Noceda does? Because ngl that is my first instinct here.

Lujanne has got to be missing some grandkids to spoil, right? The way she's always whipping out cake and ice cream for Callum, and she's so grandma-ish about it. Headcanon about her being Runaan's mom aside, she is canonically lonely and she's very sweet to Allen and Ellis and I think she's missing whatever family she once had in the past. She may never get to have that family back, so she's finding a new one among the humans who live nearby, and I think that's sweet. Found family isn't just for the young.

But Ellis is straight up gonna be her fave, I bet, because she didn't turn up her nose at Lujanne's illusion food!

Ezran and Bait have a lot more to their relationship than was visible in the show, and I'm so excited by it! Ez can tell by looking at Bait's colors that he's not truly jealous of Zym, even if he's really grumpy about the dragonling taking up his favorite human's time.

And Ez thinking a lot about his dad and the things he's taught him. They're soft leadership material, and I love that so much! "Pick your battles" and the importance of encouragement. Ahh, my heart. Ezran, you're going to be such a good king.

But wait a second: both times that Bait gets extra grumpy in Zym's first training session, Ezran has just mentioned something about flying. Guys, I think Bait wishes he could fly, really badly. And that's his biggest problem with Zym, and with Ezran teaching Zym to fly, instead of Bait who doesn't have wings so. Bait is so old that his secrets have secrets, and I'm really curious how flying fits into them now!

Rayla, Dramatic Assassin: "I need to patrol for dark forces." That's what Lujanne called the source of the purple wisps that found them. I wonder if that's an official term all Moonshadows know, or if Rayla is just taking her cue from a veteran Moon mage. And I wonder how far Rayla is falling into the apparent pattern of "one mage, one assassin", since she does spend a lot of her time patrolling without being asked.

When Callum tells Lujanne that he was bad at prince stuff, and she asks if he didn't give up and got good at those things anyway, it's an opportunity for Callum to embrace subverting his parents' expectations in favor of seeking his own path, which is a primary theme of the show. But Lujanne is a couple generations older than Callum, at the very least, and I have to wonder what her upbringing was like. Is her version of success the one she took? Was she bad at magic once too, but she persisted? She is very soft and doesn't want to kill anyone.

Maybe Lujanne had dreams of doing something else with her life, but she felt she had to pursue the destiny that others handed to her, so she studied magic as hard as she could, and she did get good at it, but using it to defend Xadia from humans is not what she wanted to do with her life. Whether there's a parallel between her and Ethari on that point, there's one between Callum and Ethari, I think. How much of your life are you willing to let others direct for you?

LISTEN I WAS DYING AT THE EAR BREAD SCENE OKAY

This is my new favorite Soren and Claudia moment ever. Soren loves him his bread, okay. Even as earplugs for Claudia's sleep ocarina tune. The fact that it's "super effective" makes me think of a Pokemon defense. The fact that he learned it at camp, where he also learned about Moonshadow Madness, is hilarious. Later on, Corvus doesn't know Soren by name, but I still love the idea of Corvus being a kind of Strider-esque camp instructor, filling the ears of his young charges with all kinds of useful tactics like ear bread for magic spell songs (which actually seemed to work as intended), and warnings about the enemy elves' blood-themed tactics (which may or may not come back around in BH)

I thought they were gonna go in a kind of deep direction when Soren still wanted his ear bread back, but then he just. Eats them. Just noms them. I love this kid. Give Soren all the bread!

[endlessdoom]

DBP19: A Doomer Boards Christmas Carol

25 Maps by the Doomer Boards Community

2019

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/xmas/dbp19xmas2

MAP01: Christmas Eve Part I by Big Ol' Billy

The first teaser to this new adventure is a small hub that shows us a cozy house that follows a simple Christmas narrative to set the mood. 4/5

MAP02: Hornaments by Big Ol' Billy

The first actual map with combat, and it is quickly let go. A circular arena with a considerable amount of enemies surrounding us. The dark design and simplistic architecture give it a rather ominous feel. We will also quickly discover one of the new hidden mechanics: shooting the bells. 3/5

MAP03: Christmas Eve Part II by Big Ol' Billy

All maps will have an intermission that leads to the main hub, which also acts as a progress and rest center for reading Christmas letters. A fantastic idea that generates a unique identity. 4/5

MAP04: Festive Neighbours by Phobus

Following the tradition of MAP02 but this time in a frame. Enemies are far away and in ambush positions, waiting for the perfect moment to attack. With a claustrophobic design and a bit lost at times (the bells are well hidden) is a map that takes relatively a little more than it should. 3/5

MAP05: Christmas Eve Part III by Big Ol' Billy

Next intermission, this time we realize that our lovely home is starting to be invaded by bad guys. Oh, Sa(n)tan will be mad. 3/5

MAP06: The Pilgrim and the Hermit by Gaspe

A large map with a rather intricate and claustrophobic design that leads to a variety of paths with various small puzzles and bloody combat. The cold is felt in the hooves. 4/5

MAP07: Christmas Eve Part IV by Big Ol' Billy

Haha. Good times. 3/5

MAP08: Surprise! by glenzinho

A medium-sized Doom-city style map with a surprising design, a multitude of secrets, a small ''bell hunt'' and a progressive combat that changes and varies constantly. Fun and full of Christmas spirit. And demonic spirit too. 4/5

MAP09: Christmas Eve Part V by Big Ol' Billy

An intermission with a... surprise... ending. 3/5

MAP10: Winter Wonderland by Phobus

A surprising wonder, dark, cold and with a unique touch that delivers a variety of visual designs on a large map with fun gameplay that flows seamlessly. 4/5

MAP11: Christmas Eve Part VI by Big Ol' Billy

A hot little adventure. 3/5

MAP12: The Nut After November by SuperCupcakeTactics and glenzinho

That name is unique. For that alone it deserves an extra point. Anyway, this is a medium-large map with a multitude of interconnected roads and tight combat. Fun and with a good Christmas charisma. Hope you aren’t afraid of spiders. 4/5

MAP13: Christmas Eve Part VII by Big Ol' Billy

Ah yes, hello. 3/5

MAP14: Two Sizes Too Small by Doom_RO

A huge adventure that involves hunting different bells and quite aggressive combats through a detailed map with a pleasant and well designed design. Unfortunately, the bell hunting can be a bit irritating due to the simple nature of switch-hunting in its primordial state, but it's still a great map. 4/5

MAP15: Christmas Eve Part VIII by Big Ol' Billy

Did you know that Xmas in Romania is beautiful? 3/5

MAP16: Christmas Tree Mountain by Scrangus McBrickdad/Jaxxoon R and glenzinho

A large map with a relatively small population for its size. With an intricate design and variety of scenarios, it has a fun formula but its layout is somewhat slippery and the progression is somewhat affected. 3/5

MAP17: Christmas Eve Part IX by Big Ol' Billy

Now we explore more and more of the city in these short intermissions. 3/5

MAP18: Xmasphobia by Thundercunt

A claustrophobic and cramped map with a labyrinthine design vaguely reminiscent of Tricks 'N' Traps meets Fear of Plutonia. Interesting premise with great design. 4/5

MAP19: Christmas Eve Part X by Big Ol' Billy

Probably the hottest intermission, to the point that it could be considered a tiny map. 3/5

MAP20: Krampus Anomaly by dmdr

An excellent map with a great flow and exquisite combat, varied and with constant dynamics between the player and the fun, coupled with a good design and understandable layout. 4/5

MAP21: Christmas Eve Part XI by Big Ol' Billy

An intermission that reveals us beyond the labyrinth. Optional but rewarding exploration. 3/5

MAP22: Where Cybneezer Hid Christmas by joe-ilya

A small adventure through a kind of infnerla mansion. Secret paths and dense combat make this map a fun mission. 3/5

MAP23: Christmas Eve Part XII by Big Ol' Billy

The last intermission makes us take a walk through the wintry and dark city to get ready for the last adventure... or maybe not. 3/5

MAP24: Realm of Christmas Time by Big Ol' Billy

The "fine" map, in quotes, is a great entertaining arena with a kind of dynamic IoS that makes us face a huge variety of enemies in a small circular arena. Fun and frenetic in an expansive Christmas violence. 4/5

MAP25: Christmas Morning by Big Ol' Billy

The so famous city of the intermissions is finally given its own use in a magnificent slaughter map that will stop us in our tracks. Enormous, large and with an incredible challenge for all players. The ultimate Christmas present goes out with a boom. You're not supposed to win it (it's technically impossible) but it's a fun and crazy way to end this wad. 4/5

Overall:

» DBP19: A Doomer Boards Christmas Carol (2019) By the Doomer Boards Community

We all want to get into the enchanting spirit of the sweet Christmas season as December approaches. Nothing like celebrating the times of peace, love and understanding among all beings as by doing it in the most holy and fantastic way possible: Killing demons. Those infernal sinners are not going to clean themselves and we are here to do it. Thanks to the fantastic criminal minds of the members of the Doomer Boards Community, we have been given a fantastic Christmas installment that has all the necessary requirements to recreate a good Christmas spirit; blood, violence, guns and many, many demons. Ready to celebrate Christmas? Hit it.

A Doomer Boards Christmas Carol is a project created by the famous krew that this time is launched towards the winter celebrations of Christmas, creating a theme focused entirely on the Christmas touch of the game and redesigning textures and skins for almost the entire project, perfectly invoking that Christmas spirit that few can achieve with a game that was practically identified as a form of 3D Satanism (although it was not exactly released at Christmas, it is a Christmas game in my heart) that would launch to the market a re-copied and unique style. That of being gory and disturbing. Well, let's take the core of Doom and now give it a new twist, one that has lots of snow, cookies, warm milk, presents, red socks and some coal for the bad kids. The result? A grandiose 25-map project (half of them small intermissions) that perfectly re-invents the celebratory style into a Christmas mood that successfully recreates the game on, you guessed it, Christmas. Or something like that.

DBP19 is a fascinating project like no other that really manages to reach those standards and deliver white maps full of passion, identity and a lot of fun. Thanks to the new use of textures and the hilarious re-skins, we now have a new paint scheme for the entire game that takes us out of the hellish air and into a cooler and, uh, wholesome kind of hell.

Starting with MAP01 by @Big Ol Billy, the first map actually works as a kind of intermission/hub-styled map that makes us progress the game accompanied by a small Christmas narrative where the different members of the team give us little stories and messages about what awaits us or the story. A little touch that gives it a nice charisma. @Big Ol Billy does practically all the intermissions, as well as a few other independent maps. MAP02 continues the adventure and this time throws us directly into a combat arena that presents us with two important aspects: 1) the visual style and 2) the new mechanic of hunting ''bells'', something like switch-hunting but more simplified. MAP03 is one more intermission made by the same author, and from now on all the maps with odd number are intermissions. MAP04 by @Phobus is a re-interpretation of the first map but with a more painting style and less mercy. Gaspe comes into action with his MAP06 which gives us a great rock fortress in a world of ice full of action and beautiful visuals. MAP08 by @Glenzinho is, as the title says, a violent surprise that shows an excellent Doom-City style. @Phobus returns with MAP10 in an intricate and tight map with dark corners and welcoming demons. MAP12 by @SuperCupcakeTactics and @glenzinho wins the award for most innovative and fun title I've read all year, luckily not all is title but also essence as this is a fascinating map that combines the two styles of mappers under a perfect synergy of emotion and visual sweetness. MAP14 by @Doom_RO is a huge odyssey that makes us look for different bells while we go through different scenarios making our way through rivers of demons, all in an exciting Christmas adventure. Oh yeah. MAP16 by @Scrangus McBrickdad/Jaxxoon R and @glenzinho pits us against a huge map with amazing visuals but a somewhat confusing layout that compensates with a nice touch of detail and variety of scenarios. Thundercunt (hehe) delivers a labyrinthine and different adventure that contains as many goodies as the demons in MAP18. MAP20 by @dmdr is a fascinating ice adventure that takes us on a journey with good flow, fun combat and excellent presentation. @joe-ilya delivers a mysterious and cold mansion in MAP22, full of demons, Masterminds and a few surprises in the basement. Finally, MAP24: Realm of Christmas Time by Big Ol' Billy is an excellent final scene as we face off in a small arena-style map against a variety of enemies and a sort of modified IoS that delivers thrills and excitement. Like the good little kids, we've been. Of course, the final intermission in MAP25 is what we call a total beast that actually works like a credits map but with a twist.

Wow that was a lot of maps! Probably among the biggest (or actually biggest) DBP, quite the gift!

This winter adventure deliberates with solid greece a delivery of 25 maps full of charisma, fun, gifts and everything we need to feel comfortable and accompanied on a lonely Christmas night while the snow crashes against our windows. Not that I can relate to that because where I live it doesn't snow, but at least with this project I have managed to relate the sweet effect of nostalgia with the innocence of yesteryear where we simply wanted to enjoy Doom in its purest form. Well, this is the purest way to enjoy it at Christmas! Or practically any month, after all I'm playing this in the middle of summer. Hehe. Anyway, want some cookies? Come and get them.

[ofstarsandfireflies]

This movie was the only thing I could think about all day today.

Star dust

A man goes to find a fallen star and gets pulled into an adventure.

Tony was in love with Pepper.

She was everything to him, but she didn’t believe him when he tried to propose.

She won’t listen when he tries to tell her that she’s different, that he can see himself growing old with her.

But he knows that no matter what he buys her, she’ll take it as him trying to buy her love, instead of trying to prove it.

He has to think of something else.

As luck would have it, when they are both in the tower looking up into the night sky, something large and bright flies over their heads and crash lands a few hundred miles away.

Pepper thinks it’s a shooting star and Tony is praying it’s anything but an alien space ship.

However, when he asks her if she’ll marry him if he brings back her ‘star’ and she actually says yes, he’s already half way off the balcony before his suit has even formed completely.

But Tony isn’t the only one who’s after the star.

Galactus’ role in the universe is to keep things balanced, and when the scales begin to tip, he’s there to set it right again.

So when it comes time to clear out a couple of planets and their surrounding stars, he sees one of the stars run from him.

It’s not the first time a star has tried to save itself, and it most likely will not be the last, but Galactus enjoys the hunt when it does happen.

So he follows it.

And sees it land on a little planet of blue.

Tony is approaching the crash site, looking for a lump of rock, when he spots something white and glowing in the very center of the crater this thing caused.

He flies toward it, colliding into the thing and knocking it and himself to the ground.

It’s a man.

A very naked man.

Tony quickly gets back to his feet.

Maybe he’s just a loon who lives around here, but he’d be loon who knows where the star is.

And the man, who isn’t at all interested in covering himself up as he tries to stand up again, tells him that he is the star.

It’s as Tony is moving to help him that he realises this man is glowing.

His body is sparkling white like there’s flecks of diamonds under his skin, and when Tony gets a look at those eyes.

Holy...

They’re like looking into a galaxy.

Tony is beside himself.

He has a star, an actual star.

The star that, once delivered to Pepper, would finally get her to marry him.

But the man has no intention of going with him.

He has to hide.

Galactus would be looking for him.

And once Galactus is gone, he has to return to where he came from before he becomes human.

That’s the worst possible outcome if he were to be in any way associated with this loathsome man before him.

So Tony has no choice but to force him.

With a simple command, his suit is dissolving away from his body and latching onto the star’s, who is appalled not only by being kidnapped, but also for being a gift for someone else.

And forcing him to walk all the way back to her.

Things don’t really start out well for the two.

Stephen is so sick of hearing about Pepper Potts and how perfect she is, which is probably worse than Tony telling him he could have flown them back home if whatever Stephen was made of hadn’t screwed up everything in the suit, rendering it useless to them.

At least he wasn’t going to present Stephen to Pepper as naked as he’d found him.

So Stephen could have some modesty while acting as a glorified wedding ring.

And then there was the sleeping.

Tony slept the night away when they could be moving.

Galactus could be anywhere.

But without Tony, the suit refused to move, so Stephen was stuck beside him, bored and angry.

When morning came, Tony noticed how tired Stephen looked and was struck with a horrible theory.

That theory became truth when Stephen collapsed, fast asleep.

Stephen was becoming mortal.

At this pace, Tony would be presenting a perfectly normal human being to Pepper, and he knew she wouldn’t believe a word of anything he’d have to tell her.

He’d been expecting a lump of celestial rock.

Not this.

Deciding to let Stephen rest, Tony makes himself comfortable, watching Stephen’s glow slowly return and wondering if he was dreaming.

If stars could dream.

Stephen finally wakes up some hours later and is confused as to what just happened to him.

When Tony tells him he fell asleep, Stephen doesn’t believe him.

Stars don’t sleep.

Before Stephen can start freaking out about his impending mortality, Tony promises that he’ll get him back to where he belongs after Pepper has seen him.

A little skeptical but also a little grateful to Tony for watching over him, Stephen stops dragging his feet when they continue on their way.

The sooner they get to Pepper, the quicker Stephen can get home.

Obviously if Tony is going to such lengths to earn her love, she must be doing something for Tony too and Stephen doesn’t want to keep Tony from that surprise.

It’s when Tony falls silent at the mention of this that Stephen can’t help but notice.

Why is Tony doing this for her when she wouldn’t do this for him? Doesn’t he deserve someone who just wants him for him and not for his wealth?

And that’s the sad thing.

Everyone wants Tony for his wealth, so he may as well be with someone he knew, right?

As the days pass, they find themselves stalling for longer and longer, setting themselves up in a nice hotel room as Tony shows Stephen around.

When once Tony would be almost dragging Stephen behind him, now they walk side by side, taking their time with no need to rush.

When once Stephen was closed off to the idea of having anything to do with this man, now he finds himself unable to keep his shine within him when their eyes meet, or hands touch.

Stephen was never good at controlling his emotions.

But this only allows their enemy to catch up to them.

It all happens so quickly, Tony has no idea what he’s doing until he’s already done it when I giant ray of light spotlights Stephen.

All he can see is Stephen in pain, that beautiful glow he’s barley realised has been happening more and more often fading away, and when the screaming starts as Stephen is torn apart by the ray of light engulfing him, Tony is grabbing him, getting them as far away as possible from it and not caring as he feels almost all of his energy drain from his body.

Somehow, they make it to the safety of their hotel room.

And almost as soon as they do, Tony's human body, the one which survived a ray intended for converting planets into nothing but energy, falls against Stephen, making the star catch him.

Stephen helps lie him down in his bed, climbing in as well so he can rest Tony’s head in his lap, eyes trained on his chest rising and falling.

His hands are stinging from where his very essence had been ripped out, but he pays it no mind as he runs them through Tony’s hair.

And as he does so, he begins talking.

He tells him how he feels about Pepper using him.

He tells him how he would never expect anything from Tony like that if they were in a relationship.

He tells him how Tony has captured his heart, and if he wants it, all he has to do is say the word and it’s his.

And when Tony wakes, he does.

Now just minutes away from Pepper, Tony leaves Stephen in bed to get changed and head to her.

He’s not going to marry her.

He’ll go to her and tell her just that, and he’ll pick up a new housing unit while he’s there so he has something to protect Stephen with when Galactus comes for him again.

Pepper hadn’t thought Tony would actually take her seriously and try to bring her an actual star, but as Tony is swapping over his housing units, he hears a loud booming voice. Looking out of his window, he sees a giant of a figure who could only be Galactus, with what looks like a massive steel planet covering the sky.

And he left Stephen alone.

Quickly telling Pepper to stay hidden, he’s out of the tower and up in the air, scanning the layout of the ship and thinking how best he can use this giant machine to work for him instead of against him.

It’s only when Friday points out a single exaust port leading directly to the reactor system which is the same design flaw the Death Star has in Starwars, Tony realises two things.

The first is that Friday watches too many movies with Peter, the second is that he can fly right up to it, send a homing rocket down that port and blow at least part of it up.

The very part which will release all the planet energy this thing lives on according to Friday.

But while Tony is too busy protecting Stephen, Stephen comes out of of the hotel to protect Tony, using the love that shines within him, out through what little remains of his glow, blindng Galactus as Tony flies right past him and nails the shot.

The Worldship explodes, sending all of that energy out straight into Galactus, who can’t handle that much all at once.

But what Galactus does and where he goes is of little concern to Tony, the intense light flickering to him, calling to him, all he can focus on.

When he lands beside Stephen, weak but alive, those gorgeous eyes flick from Tony’s to something above him.

Tony turns to look.

With the explosion, a portal has opened, revealing the blackness of space above them.

Stephen’s home.

It’s right there, just a few thousand feet above their heads.

But Stephen is too weak to get up there by himself.

Tony is not going to let Stephen give up.

He shines too brightly to just belong to him.

He should be marvelled at by everyone who enjoys looking up at the night sky.

Scooping him up, his suit blasts them up towards the open portal, which has slowly begun to close.

All he has to do is get Stephen up there and he’ll remain a star.

His light is fading, and he barely has the strength to raise one of his scarred hands and caress Tony’s face.

His breath is but a whisper when those three words linger between them.

Tony hovers between his own world and Stephen’s, gazing into those incredible eyes.

They were so close.

If they continued up, Stephen’s hands would heal, his light would return, he would live forever, as he had done for centuries.

If Tony brought them back down, Stephen’s mortality would mean he could never return.

And yet, here he was, telling Tony that that was the path he wished to take, if a star were allowed to wish.

That the few days he’d spent on Earth in Tony’s company had meant more to him than his eternity of watching.

Tony tore his eyes away from Stephen’s to look up at the portal above them.

Watching it close completely as he brought them back down, holding his star a little tighter.

Quotes

“This may seem strange, but have you seen a fallen star anywhere?”

“You’re funny.”

“No, really. We’re in a crater. This must be where it fell.”

“Yeah this is where it fell. It is. Or, if you want to be really specific, up there is where this weird, bloody necklace came out of nowhere and knocked it out of the heavens when it was minding its own business. And over there is where it landed. And right here, this is where it got hit by a magical flying moron!”

“You’re the star! You’re the star? Really?”

Tony and Stephen meet, both not getting off to a very good start.

“Because the little I know about love is that it’s unconditional. It’s not something you can buy.”

“Hang on. This wasn’t about me buying her love. This was a way for me to prove how I felt.”

“And what’s she doing to prove how she feels about you?”

Tony has to think about that one.

“You know when I said I know little about love? Well, that wasn’t true. I know a lot about love. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen centuries and centuries of it. And it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain and lies. Hate. Made me want to turn away and never look down again. But to see the way that mankind loves. I mean, you could search the furthest reaches of the universe, and never find anything more beautiful. So, yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and, well, strangely easy to mistake for loathing. And...what I’m trying to say, Tristan, is...I think I love you. My heart, it feels like my chest can barley contain it. Like it doesn’t belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I’d wish for nothing in exchange. No gifts, no goods, no demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you love me, too. Just your heat...in exchange for mine.” Stephen’s Wish.

Wish Upon

While trying to show the one he thinks he loves how he feels, Tony meets the one he’s meant to be with

Missed a Day? Catch up here!

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5

Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Day 10

Day 11 Day 12 Day 13 Day 14 Day 15

Day 16 Day 17 Day 18 Day 19 Day 20

Day 21 Day 22 Day 23 Day 24

[psychcomposer]

Alright, I have too many feelings about a video game that’s going to come out in a month that I really just need to get out. It’s been over a decade and one of my favorite games, The World Ends With You, is finally getting a sequel. I’ve been brooding on the trailers for months, and I just finished the demo, so it is time to put down my capital T Thoughts on Neo: The World Ends With You.

As a warning, this will be entirely too long. But I’m not about to keep this bound up any longer.

TWEWY is my favorite title for the Nintendo DS. It is a JRPG starring Neku Sakuraba, an aggressively antisocial teen living in the Tokyo district of Shibuya. He is suddenly pulled into a test of survival called The Reaper’s Game, where he is forced to join forces with a partner in order to survive a week of lethal objectives in a sub-planar version of Shibuya. I love the story, its such an honest and interesting take on learning to get outside of your comfort zone. But more than that, it is a game that does so much to put a modern twist on every piece of your typical JRPG. You control two characters at once, Neku with the touch screen and his partner with the control pad, forcing you to split your attention and giving mechanic weight to the idea that Neku can’t survive alone. Armor and weapons are replaced with clothes and outfits, with a character’s ability to wear them restricted not by class but by a character’s bravery. The music list is filled with punk, alt-rock and hip-hop that are a stark contrast to the symphonic tracks of other titles. Battles aren’t random impediments, but fun diversions that sport a robust reward system that encourages players to push their limits.

But even more than that, the most modern thing I appreciate about TWEWY has to be the characters. Neku, Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme all feel like believable teens that grew up in the 2000′s. They bicker, clash, and banter like teens struggling to survive and make sense of their situation. One of my favorite little gimicks of the story is just how many nicknames there are for every character. Almost everyone has earned a few nicknames. One of my favorite examples is Sho Minamimoto. He’s a reaper with an obsession with math, often infusing his speech with mathematical jargon or expressions, and seems to enjoy erecting “art installations”, which most people can only decipher as towers of trash. Over the course of the story, he gets called Pi-face, the Grim Heaper, and another nickname I can’t even mention because of spoilers. It’s just... such a nice little human touch, these kids throwing crafted insults at a human enforcer of their doom that could almost certainly tear them apart.

I’m getting into this to try to give a sense of why I enjoy TWEWY so much, why it has such a unique place in my heart. Its a game I’ve 100% completed several times over, a task that’s no easy feat with the sheer amount of collectibles and post-game objectives. Unfortunately, for the last year or two, I’ve been kind of dreading this sequel.

Neo:TWEWY has been... a long time coming. Way back in 2007 they had a whole website counting down to some sort of announcement, with the music slowly building in intensity. I remember following it with bated breath, until it finally hit zero! And we got... An ios port of the game. Talk about a let-down. To be fair, apparently it is a solid port, even managing to re-work the old battle system, one that required a second screen to work properly, into one that only needed one. But what that really offered to someone like me was the hint of a sequel, a single image of a new character being shown. They kept flirting with the idea of bringing the series back. The main cast even featured in a Kingdom Hearts game, of all things, even if they didn’t really do a whole lot. But these acknowledgments grew sparser and sparser.

A few years ago, they released a switch port of the game. Not only that, it included an epilogue! They were finally getting a sequel rolling! Of course I bought that game, beat it yet again, and fought my way to the new content and the hint of the new story ahead.

It was... Well. I found it disappointing.

The gameplay was competent, even if it was clear that the epilogue itself really hadn’t had too much put into it. One new character,  new enemies just being reskins of old ones. It wasn’t meant to be dlc itself or anything, it was just there to herald a return to the series. That wasn’t what bugged me. What bugged me was the writing. It was heart-wrenching. It just didn’t feel right. It just felt flat compared to the story I’d enjoyed so many times. But what really killed my excitement was the new character, Coco.

Now, odd personality quirks are not too unusual among the ensemble of TWEWY. Pi-face is just one of the characters that is so infused with a particular theme that it shows in how they express themselves. It’s part of the charm of them, discovering the personalities that live in this dark underworld of Shibuya. But Coco... she talks like the most stereotypical young teenager possible. unironic lols, totez (yes, spelt exactly like that, in a speech format), OMG’s, and just, like, likes everywhere! It felt like someone who knew they needed to make a quirky character but had no idea how to write one well, and just made the most stereotypical caricature possible. I hated seeing that. It embodied every fear I had about the sequel being just a cynical project, pushed forward after so many years  by people who just didn’t understand what made the original great. That mild dread was so persistent that even the release of the first few trailers couldn’t really get me excited for the game. Neo:TWEWY was shifting into 3d from the original 2.5d, with all the problems that could cause. What I could see of the story felt so much more like a generic fantasy tale with some modern buildings than the story I had grown through my teenage years with. And, well... Just look the original Neku and the new one they showed off.

Look at this. Look at one of the most vibrant, eye-catching character designs on the market for any JRPG in history, one that manages to mix purple and orange with striking lights and darks. And then look at the teenager edgelord bullshit they did with him. It’s atrocious. I hate it. He’s just another guy in a black outfit and just too much fucking cool guy protagonist power to not have the story be about him at this point. And look, I know that there’s Story LoreTM, I know that there could be some twist that explains this, I know that him being such a denial of his old self could be the entire fucking point. But let me tell you, when I saw this, I felt years of shifting, misplaced unease coalesce into a hard lump of dread.

And... Even... So... I did the stupidest thing I could have possibly done and preordered the game anyway. Don’t look at me like that, nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

But you know what? The damnedest thing happened. They released a demo for the new game a month before its release. And I played it, and... I enjoyed it.

Did you see that coming? I certainly didn’t. Welcome to the roller coaster.

Right off the bat, the writing soothed a lot of the fears I had. It felt right at home, like being plopped between to teens exchanging banter. One of the first exchanges is Rindo and Fret, his best friend, trying to meet up. Fret wants Rindo to meet him at  someplace called Wunafo, an area Rindo is clueless about. After some annoyed texting, it turns out Fret is actually referring to 104, a local landmark of a building. Fret insists that its a stylish improvement on the name. Rindo only gives him some grief about it..

I’m not doing the scene justice, or I could just be really desperate for half-decent writing, but I can’t deny that it quickly put a smile on my face. I am almost sure I’ve had this conversation before in years past myself. And beyond that, this game boasts voice acting that brings out a ton of personality in the large cast they are introducing (besides Rindo, which is a shame because he’s the protagonist... hopefully he gets over his apathetic teenager shtick eventually). Not everything is voiced, but it conveys so much appeal and personality, and even when the character’s aren’t voiced there is a conversation screen that occasionally breaks out some stylish layouts to convey mood and temperment and clearly draw from the style that made the original game pop so much.

The battles, of course, have been completely revamped. TWEWY had you control two characters, one of which you could customize by equipping up to 6 different pins that all used different motions and unleashed different attacks. Now you control up to four characters, but each one can only use one pin. But even so, it feels very genuine to its roots. An effective build in TWEWY was usually one that let you stagger an opponent so you can unload a bunch of attacks on them, and in Neo:TWEWY the game actively pushes you to folllow up attacks with characters in succession. It would be easy for this to devolve into a mash-fest, but even with the little time I had with the game it introduced a wrinkle in that- an attack that unleashed a single powerful blow, but couldn’t just be unleashed at the end of the previous combo. It needed to be charged for a while, long enough for the combo timer to deplete. So now an effective combo requires thinking ahead, and even after that you’re paying attention to enemies to dodge out of the way when they strike back. It’s entirely possible this system will flop in the late game, but so far it is robust enough for me to think that it will be one that could make me look forward to battles.

The music hasn’t impressed me so far, besides the tracks that have made the transition from the original. But I remember those strange tracks needing some time before I appreciated them too.

Finally, the story has hooked me. I don’t think that needs much more explanation. I want to see more of these characters and see the changes that have been made to the world in what I assume is years after Neku’s game. And to address the elephant in the room, Neku has not made his appearance in what is available in the demo. Odds are I will probably hate whatever they do with him. But there is enough happening in the space around it that I’m interested in exploring, and a bruised apple can still taste sweet.

Almost all of this, of course, is mostly just saying that Neo:TWEWY is not doomed to fail. There is still plenty of room for things to go wrong later on. There are entire systems I haven’t really seen in game, like shops, pin evolution, clothing and food (Though it looks like they have changed the food system significantly, which I approve of). The things that unnerved me so much in the trickle of information after this game’s announcement could still be enough to turn this sour. But I’m smiling as I’m strapping myself in for this ride now, one I’ve waited quite a long time for. Whatever’s coming, I’m excited.

[everygame]

Dicey Dungeons (Nintendo Switch)

Developed/Published by: Terry Cavanagh Released: 15/12/2020 Completed: n/a Completion: Beat all the Warrior challenges and then at least two of all of the other characters. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

Dicey Dungeons is excellent. I’m going to lead with that because as usual I’ll spend a significant amount of time moaning about it but actually, I think it’s great and there’s no reason you shouldn’t get it.

Basically, Dicey Dungeons is most simply explained as “Yahtzee if every game of Yahtzee was a random encounter in an RPG dungeon” but if you’re more au-fait with board games it is, at its most basic, a dice-rolling and placement game--the one that sticks out in my mind is Alien Frontiers, but this is much more like the short-lived Warhammer Quest board game (well, as far as I remember, it’s been a while since I’ve played… although I admit it didn’t use traditional dice.)

What you’d assume is that Dicey Dungeon uses this (excellent, solid) design to make an otherwise metagame traditional RPG, but instead I’d say it suffers from a case of “designer-itis.” Instead of sticking to the basic idea and using it in interesting ways, it limits that to about a sixth of the game and keeps building upon it in more complicated ways, such as mashing up dice rolling with blackjack mechanics, or adding in more overt deck-building mechanics.

I think Terry Cavanagh is an incredibly intelligent designer, and I think when you’re that clever you probably find the basic simple idea a bit boring and you don’t want to just keep adding content you want to add flair, and so you make the metagame static (always six floors, enemies with similar layouts, etc.) and go wild elsewhere. But this is a bit like if Cinco Paus had six different characters, so for me, it’s actually too much, and it’s particularly a shame because there are a few characters I just don’t like at all (The Witch and the Robot are… frustrating.)

Of course, if you’re not a completionist, it’s sort of ok, because there’s not actually a ton of content you’re missing out if you don’t finish this. I have this probably incorrect idea that people might be tired of everything being a roguelike [“But Hades is a roguelike???”-Ed.] yeah as I said, probably incorrect, but even if I’m correct I do still wish this was actually just a roguelike where I chose one of the character archetypes and could ignore the others.

Also it’s a bit disappointing that each character really only gets a few actual variations and the rest are “more but harder.”

That all said though I played this for ages and I really enjoyed it when I was playing the characters I like. I didn’t even get that annoyed when I failed because six levels isn’t that long to run through again. I recommend this (as long as you’re strong enough to just play the bits you actually like).

Will I ever play it again? I have left this on my Switch, but probably not, because it’s really only “more but harder” levels for characters I like and as I said, it’s not really new content.

Maybe if there was new content! Final Thought: One thing I will say though is that variety may have actually come at a cost of actual balance. With each character archetype it feels like there are one, maybe two builds that you have to work towards to actually succeed, especially in the harder versions. I think this is ultimately what made me put this down, and it’s a bit of a shame. It kind of feels like it compresses each different level to just a couple of actual decisions once it clicks with you, and then it comes down to the dice.

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi.

[knifeonmars]

Capsule Reviews, February 2021

Here's some things I've been reading.

The Curse of Brimstone 

DC's New Age of Heroes books, emerging from the beginning of Scott Snyder's creative-flameout-as-crossover-event Metal, mostly constituted riffs on Marvel heroes like the Fantastic Four (in The Terrifics) or the Hulk (in Damage). The Curse of Brimstone is a riff on Ghost Rider. It's... uneven. The first volume is generally pretty good, and when Phillip Tan is drawing it, as he does the first three and a half issues, it's gorgeous and unique, when he departs though, the quality takes a nose dive. None of the replacement artists, including the great Denis Cowan, can quite fill his shoes, and the story gets old fast. Guy makes a deal with the devil (or rather, a devil-like inhabitant of the "Dark Multiverse" as a not horribly handled tie-in to the conceits of Metal), realizes it's a raw deal, and rebels. The characters are flat, lots of time is spent with the main character's sister haranguing him to not use his powers (it is, in my humble opinion, something of a cardinal sin to have a character whose primary role is telling other characters to stop doing interesting things), too many potboiler "I know you're still in there!/I can feel this power consuming me!" exchanges, a couple of underwhelming guest spots (including a genuinely pointless appearance by the old, white, boring Doctor Fate) too many flashbacks, and not enough of the action. There's potential in the classic demonic hero rebelling plotline and its link to the liminal spaces of the DC universe, forgotten towns and economic depression, but the wheels come off this series pretty much as soon as Tan leaves. The really disappointing this is that the series is clearly built as an artistic showcase, so after Tan's shockingly early departure, the main appeal of the series is gone and there's nothing left but the playing out of an obviously threadbare story.

Star Wars - Boba Fett: Death, Lies, and Treachery

I don't care much about Star Wars these days, and I think that most of the old Expanded Universe was, as evidenced by Crimson Empire, pretty bad. Death, Lies, and Treachery, is that rare Star Wars EU comic which is actually good. John Wagner writes and he's in full-on 2000 AD mode, writing Boba Fett as a slightly more unpleasant Johnny Alpha (who is like a mercenary Judge Dredd, for those unfamiliar) right on down to the appearance of a funny alien sidekick for one of the characters. The main attraction is Cam Kennedy's art though, along with his inimitable colors: this might be the best looking Star Wars comic ever. The designs are all weird and chunky, with an almost kitbashed feeling that captures the lived in aesthetic of classic Star Wars, and the colors are one of a kind. Natural, neutral white light does not exist in this comic, everything is always bathed at all times in lurid greens or yellows, occasionally reds, and it looks incredible. In terms of "Expanded Universe" material for Star Wars, this hits the sweet spot of looking and feeling of a piece, but exploring the edges of the concept with a unique voice. It's great. I read this digitally, but I'd consider it a must-buy in print if I ever get the chance at a deal.

Zaroff

Zaroff is a French comic (novel? novella?). It's like 90 pages and it delivers exactly on its premise of "Die Hard starring the bad guy from The Most Dangerous Game." It's pretty good. Count Zaroff, he of the habitual hunting of humans, turns out to have killed a mafia don at some point, and after miraculously escaping his own seeming death at the end of the original story, finds himself hunted by the irate associates of this gangster, who have brought along Zaroff's sister and her kids to spice things up. Zaroff not only finds himself the hunt, but he also has to protect his estranged family as they struggle to survive. Nothing about this book or its twists and turns is likely to surprise you, but I don't think being surprised is always necessary for quality. Zaroff delivers on pulpy, early-20th century jungle action, is gorgeously rendered, and the fact that Zaroff himself is an unrepentant villain adds just enough of an unexpected element to the proceedings and character dynamics that it doesn't feel rote. There's a couple of points, ones typical of Eurocomics, which spark a slight sour note, such as some "period appropriate" racism and flashes of the male gaze, but for the most part these are relatively contained. It's good.

Batman: Gothic

Long before Grant Morrison did their Bat-epic, they wrote Batman: Gothic, an entirely different, but then again maybe not so different, kind of thing. It starts off with what must be called a riff on Fritz Lang's film, M, only where that story ends with a crew of gangsters deciding they cannot pass moral judgment on a deranged child-murderer, in Morrison's story they go ahead and kill him, only for the killer to return years later to rather horribly murder all of them as a warmup for a grandiose scheme involving unleashing a weaponized form of the bubonic plague on Gotham City as an offering to Satan. Along the way it turns out that said villain, one Mr. Whisper, is a former schoolmaster of Bruce Wayne's, who terrified the young Batman in the days before his parent's deaths. It's an earlier Morrison story and it shows. Certain elements presage their later Batman work; Mr. Whisper as a satanic enemy recalls the later Doctor Hurt, and the cathedral Mr. Whisper built to harvest souls recalls what writers like Morrison, Milligan, and Snyder would do concerning Gotham as a whole years later.The art, by Klaus Janson, is spectacular. If you're familiar at all with his work collaborating with Frank Miller you'll see him continuing in a similar vein and it's all quite good, even when he stretches beyond the street milieu which most readers might know him from. There's one particular sequence where Janson renders a needlessly complicated Rube Goldberg machine in motion that manages to work despite being static images. The writing by Morrison though, is not their finest. The M riff doesn't last as long as it could, and Mr. Whisper's turn in the latter half of the story from delicious creepy wraith to a cackling mass murderer who puts Batman in an easily escaped death trap feels like something of a letdown from the promise of the first half of the book. Gothic is good, but not, in my opinion, great. It's certainly worth checking out for Morrison fans however, and I imagine that someone well-versed in his latter Batman stuff might be able to find some real resonance between the two.

Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters

For a long, long time, Longbow Hunters was THE Green Arrow story. It is to Green Arrow as TDKR is to Batman, deliberately so. Mike Grell wrote and drew the reinvention of the character from his role as the Justice League's resident limousine liberal to a gritty urban vigilante operating in Seattle over the course of these three issues, which he'd follow up with a subsequent ongoing. Going back to it, it certainly merits its reputation, but its far from timeless. Grell's art is unimpeachable absolutely incredible, with great splashes and spreads, subtle colors, and really great figure work. The narrative is almost so 80's it hurts though, revolving around West Coast serial killers, cocaine, the CIA and the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Yakuza, and it's hard to look back at some of this stuff without smirking. The story begins with a teenager strung out on tainted coke sprinting through a window in a scene that's right out of Reefer Madness. In the cold light of a day 30+ years later, parts of it look more than a little silly. The 80's-ness of it all doesn't stop with that stuff though, even the superhero elements smack of it. Green Arrow realizes that he's lost a step and has be to be shown a way forward by an Asian woman skilled in the martial arts (recalling Vic Sage's reinvention in the pages of The Question), and Black Canary gets captured and torture off-panel for the sake of showing that this is real crime now, not the superhero silliness they've dealt with before. The treatment of Black Canary here is pretty markedly heinous, it's a classic fridging and Grell's claims that he didn't intentionally imply sexual assault in his depiction of her torture is probably true, but still feels more than a little weak considering how he chose to render it.The final analysis is that this book is good, but it exists strictly in the frame of the 1980's. If you're a fan of Green Arrow, there are worse books to pick up, or if you're interested in that era of DC Comics it's more than worth it, but as a matter of general interest I wouldn't recommend it very highly.

SHIELD by Steranko

Jim Steranko is sort of the prodigy of the early Marvel years, a young guy who came up through the system, blossomed into an incredible talent, and then left the company, and by and large the industry, behind. He would go on to dabble in publishing, work in other mediums, and generally kick around as the prodigal son of Marvel Comics. This collection, of both his Nick Fury shorts in the pages of Strange Tales and the four issues he drew of the original Nick Fury solo series, charts Steranko's growth as an artist. The book starts off with Steranko working from Jack Kirby's layouts with Stan Lee's dialogue and writing, and Steranko might be the one guy in history for whom working off of Kirby's blueprints is clearly holding him back. The first third or so of this collection really isn't much to write home about, as Steranko is obviously constrained by someone else's style, and at the end of the day those early stories still read as somewhat uninspired pulp compared to the highlights of early Marvel. There are flashes though, of techniques and ideas, which foreshadow what Steranko is capable of, and when he finally takes over as solo writer/artist it's like he's been unleashed. He immediately has Nick Fury tear off his shirt and start throwing guys around over psychedelic effects. He writes out most of Kirby and Lee's frankly uninspired boys' club supporting cast, he makes Fury visibly older, wearier, but also so much cooler. It's the birth of Nick Fury as a distinctly comic book super spy.By the time he finishes wrapping up the previous writers' plotline with Hydra and Baron von Strucker, Steranko is firing on all cylinders. By the time it gets to Steranko's Fury solo series, he's somehow surpassed himself, turning in effects, panel structures, and weird stories which make the earlier installment about a suit-wearing Man from UNCLE knockoff and its strict six-panel layouts look absolutely fossilized.I can't recommend this collection highly enough for any fan of the artform, even if the stories themselves might not be everyone's cup of tear. It's truly incredible to watch Steranko emerge as an artist over the course of this single collection. The book itself has a few problems, it's not the most elegantly designed in its supporting materials and index, but the content of it more than outweighs that. It's great stuff.

[senpai-no-lie]

Dark Deity Chapters 1-5 Thoughts

Bought Dark Deity last night and played the first 5 chapters before I looked up and realized it was 2:30 AM lol. Available on Steam and on sale for like ~$20ish, so definitely worth checking out if you like tactical RPGs. I’ll put some general thoughts here and then some more specific ones under the keep reading to keep this post from getting to big. I think for the price it’s at, the game is well-polished and fun! Sometimes the sentence structure/flavor of the exposition text is a bit basic, but I just remind myself it’s not fair to compare it to a AAA game. 

I’m not sure if it’s because I was using an Xbox controller or what, but I noticed the game glitching out several times when I was trying to use the button to hop between units on the battle map. Unplugging my controller did not help, so I am tentatively assuming it’s a game problem. Another couple nitpicks I have is the text size being on the small size and the lack of variety with the loading screens. 

The text size is a complaint I have with most games in the genre; it’s just more noticeable with DD because I have to play it on the computer/HDMI it to my TV rather than on the Switch or DS I can hold inches from my face. The loading screens, I just wish they had more than the king on the throne, the world?, and the first four characters training to cut between for loading screens. The King one is especially weird because it was used in the opening exposition dump, so seeing it over and over when the King doesn’t show up again until post chapter 5 just didn’t jive with me. Obviously I’m not expecting visually impressive loading screens, but just the character sprites or game tips would’ve worked fine for extra variety (or a black loading screen with the logo. The load times aren’t that long).

More detailed thoughts below, since I might talk about things that could be “spoilery” for people who want to go in blind as possible. 

First of all, I’d just like to put my prediction out there that I think the King killed his own dad. I base this on nothing but vibes. 

Art and Character Designs: 

I love the character portraits and the pixel sprits they use during gameplay/combat. Very cute and reminds me of older FE games. The HP bars being little potion bottles is also very charming. I loathe how plasticky FE 3H looks, so it warms my heart to play a game in the same genre that doesn’t look like that. Also hot take, but I really do prefer the limited voice acting to every line being voiced. It’s a little disappointing that the combat animations for weapons don’t change when you select a different weapon, but every one of your units has a unique battle sprite and getting promoted changes their look. Enemy sprites, for the most part, are the same character (generic guy), but that’s fine. 

Characters and Supports: 

I don’t have too much to say about characters right now except that I like them. Too early to tell if there’s any shipping material, but I like each character as an individual and I find all their designs to be pleasing. I’ve started unlocking supports (I have most of my characters’ current support logs filled to C), and it seems like some of them might only unlock after a certain chapter, because I see an ! for Irving and Elias, but smashing the A button doesn’t let me see anything. Also wanted to say thank GOD for useful archer characters. Been burned by fucking FE:SD Gordin and FE:RD Edward just sucking monkey butt after their intro chapter, and I’m very pleased Garrick and Sophia are tactically useful. I haven’t had any deadweight characters yet, I’m happy to report, though it is only 5 chapters in. 

Difficulty: 

I appreciate that they have three different difficulty options, and looking over all the menus, there looks to be a lot of potential replayability because they allow you to randomize items, recruitment, and weapons iirc. I chose the middle difficulty, and thus far it’s been smooth sailing without being a cakewalk. Can confirm, because I am a hasty person in tactical RPGs, that when your units are defeated, they do not die; they merely lose a random stat point. I lost both my mages during chapter 4 lol. Another thing I noticed is that there really isn’t a tutorial and the game doesn’t necessarily “pause” to explain mechanics to you. This game is definitely for people who like FE or other tactical RPGs, but even so, I think for most if it you don’t really need a tutorial. I just wish it was more clear in the beginning how the different weapons work (there is no weapon durability, from what I can tell, bless) and the different types of classes/damage types. For example, I promoted Elias during chapter 5, and based on my choice (there are 4 promotion options), he went from being a spear user to using axes, but I don’t fully understand how much that really matters. 

Chapter 5: 

This gets a special section because it’s most fresh in my mind and I wanted to chitchat about it. The gemstones are obviously going to be important later, but a henchman of a presumable Future Big Bad pretending to look for it for his father and then three Mysterious Ladies also looking for it and that leading to a big battle is kind of funny. Worse reasons to have a battle, and also Brooke is hot, so welcome to the team. I had assumed that the three ladies you were asked to promote wouldn’t be permanent members of your party, so while I stand by my promotion choices, I still wish I had known you’d be keeping Brooke beforehand. The map design of chapter 5 is... interesting. It took me a bit to figure out what the fuck I was looking at, and that the colored circle things were portals I and the enemy could use to make it further on the map. The map design did make it very easy for Garrick and Sophia to do some impressive chip damage, though. 

So far, the map objectives have had a nice variety, as had the layout of the maps. I wish it was easier to tell which unit is the commander/boss you must beat, and it was easier to look at your units’ skills while at camp. I have no idea what button it could be, because I’ve tried them all. I do appreciate there is a zoom-in and zoom-out feature on the battle map, however.  I like how the weapon system works and it was fairly intuitive to figure out how to forge/strengthen weapons. I do like feeling like a genius/sense of discovery from figuring out a game’s mechanics, but they could’ve fleshed out the tips section a bit further all the same. 

[xb-squaredx]

Please Don’t Sleep on Hades

2020’s…been a real year, huh? At a time when in-person gatherings aren’t much of a thing and people have to stay in, video games are suddenly a pretty attractive option. That said, few games have really grabbed me this year; in a roundabout way, 2020’s been a year of reruns, as I go through a lot of games I’ve already played or games that are just yesterday’s news (but new to me!). However, in the nick of time, the folks at Supergiant Games delivered unto us their latest title, Hades. While they’ve been working on this game for years, with it hitting Early Access on Steam back in 2018, the full version of Hades finally hit Steam, the Epic Game Store and made the leap to consoles with the Switch, which is where I picked it up. It has been a WHILE since I’ve had a game grab me so strongly so early on, and I’ve been hearing this game’s praises for years now already, so allow me to happily state why I think Hades is worthy of the hype and is a fantastic game I’d easily recommend!

DADDY ISSUES

OK, so first things first…you don’t actually play as Hades in this game, but rather his son Zagreus. Ol’ Zag has had it with his father, and tries to literally fight his way out of hell to reach the surface, and no matter what his old man puts in his way, Zagreus (and the player) will meet the challenge. And probably die, but hey, that’s OK! In the underworld, death is more of an inconvenience than anything else, so after taking a moment to dust himself off, Zagreus will head out for another attempt. For as long as it takes.

Hades is a rogue-like, meaning it’s a game based around randomization and adaptation. On any given “run” of the game, the level layouts, enemies present and the variety of power-ups Zagreus can find will be left to chance, with the player challenged to amass the best build they can to eventually break out of hell and reach the human world and if you die…start from scratch. That said, Hades is among the ever-growing sub-genre of rogue-lites, in that there IS some permanent progression, which takes a bit of a sting out of dying, but more on that later. Now, most games of this type aren’t really big on story. They have a premise that’s little more than an excuse to play. Splunkey wants you to explore a cave, The Binding of Isaac sees you escaping a basement and in Enter the Gungeon you uh…e-enter the gun—you get the point! But what separates Hades from most rogue-likes/lites is that there actually IS a very interesting story that unfolds as you play.

There’s more to Zag’s desire to get to the surface than just getting away from his father, though their strained relationship certainly doesn’t help matters, and over the course of your many, MANY escape attempts, players learn of the rather screwed-up nature of Zagreus’ family of deities, though any mythology nut could tell you to expect that. Hades has an incredibly charismatic cast, superb voice acting across the board, and some real sharp writing that really got me wanting to meet anyone and everyone and learn more about this world. You’re likely to run into Hypnos first, who always has a “tip” ready for you when you meet your end to a given enemy or hazard, or the fabled hero Achilles, who acts as a mentor to Zagreus. There’s Dusa, the adorably frazzled flying gorgon head who acts as the House of Hades’ maid, and of course…Megaera, of the Furies.

She serves as the first proper boss in the game, and will be a pretty sizable challenge for most players, but as you eventually overcome her again and again, she and Zagreus end up attempting to reconnect with each other, and her recurring fights become an excuse to flirt and test each other. I may as well say too that it’s easy to fall in love with the characters in this game because…I-I mean, just look at them! This game is a bisexual’s paradise, that’s all I’ll say.

A bit of a fun fact, but Zagreus’ voice actor, Darren Korb, is also a composer at Supergiant, so he’s a man of many talents, since Hades has a killer score. From the laid-back tunes at the House of Hades where you can unwind and recharge after a botched run, to the pulse-pounding boss theme, there’s some GREAT music on display here. And that’s before you meet Orpheus and Eurydice, two characters with amazing singing voices that, if you play your cards right, might start singing together. The game’s visuals, meanwhile, aren’t a slouch either. While the level layouts are randomized, everything manages to look well-crafted, each region of the underworld having their own distinct look and feel. The fiery pits of Asphodel end up juxtaposing well with the paradise that is Elysium. Now, character models are generally less-detailed since the camera stays zoomed out to give players a good view of the action, but the portraits for the various characters more than make up for it with their distinct, detailed designs. A-And I’m not just saying that because everyone’s hot! Now, admittedly you might take a look at Zag and think he’s nothing but an edgelord and the game itself might be taking itself too seriously, but in reality, Hades strikes a pretty good balance, and definitely carries a sense of humor. Characters love to snark at each other, the various Shades chilling in the House of Hades’ lounge have some funny conversations you can listen in on and all told, the game only gets serious when appropriate. Really, I have no real complaints with the game on a presentation level; it’s all aces so far, and thankfully the game-y part follows suit!

LIVE.DIE. REPEAT.

Hades is best described as a dungeon-crawler. You have an isometric view as you move about, avoiding hazards and fighting off enemies as you climb each chamber on your way to the surface. Defeat every enemy in a chamber and get a reward. Sounds simple enough until you factor in all of the various permutations of events; Hades aims to make sure no two runs are alike, with different enemies, power-ups and challenges awaiting you. All of this is doled out slowly, as with each subsequent playthrough you begin to have more of the game unraveled. First and foremost, Zagreus can gain various Boons from the other Olympian Gods, who are sympathetic to his plight and lend him some power if he makes contact with them. Each God has their own twist on the abilities they grant Zagreus. They can all increase his stats in some way, or affect either his dash ability or his Cast, a projectile attack. For Zeus, naturally, all of Zagreus’ moves will gain an electric effect, whereas Artemis focuses more on upping Zag’s critical hit chance. Dionysus, the God of Wine, grants you the “hangover” status effect, allowing your attacks to uh…make enemies drunk? Sure! You’ll be given a random selection of three Boons to pick from, of varying rarities. Over the course of a run, you might try to nab as many Boons from the same God as possible, or vary it up and see which abilities synchronize together. At times, you might even be granted a Duo Boon, where two Gods decide to combine their power for a special ability that plays to both of their strengths. Still, at other times, you might be forced into a Trial of the Gods, where you must choose one God’s Boon over the other, with the snubbed God lashing out afterwards. Hey, just because they’re Gods, doesn’t mean they’re nice. Of course, you’ve also got a variety of health and weapon upgrades too. In fact, let’s gush about the weapons for a second, shall we?

At the time of writing, Hades has six weapons to play with. You start with a sword, which is the all-rounder of the set, but as you gain keys to unlock more weapons, you can start to really experiment. The bow and rail cannon serve as ranged options with different approaches, while the spear is the melee weapon with the best range at the cost of pure power. The shield grants you absolute defense at the cost of range, while the gauntlets let you unleash your fisticuffs on underworld scum, though leave you with limited ranged attacks. Each weapon has specific Boons and weapon upgrades you can find as well, some of which can radically alter how a weapon works. The rail cannon, for example, fires a lot faster than the bow, but this is balanced by needing to manually reload…unless you get a weapon upgrade that gives you unlimited ammo with the only catch being that you can only do burst fire. Adding to this, players eventually unlock hidden Aspects of weapons, morphing them into different forms which can also influence their moveset. Change the shield to the Aspect of Zeus, and when you throw your shield Captain America style, it stays out and continually spins, dealing tons of damage over time and effectively forcing enemies to get sliced to bits if they want to get near you. I didn’t expect this game to have half this many weapons or to have them balanced so well. Really, just like anything else, weapons are another tool you can poke and prod and experiment with until you get a truly killer collection of Boons and upgrades that let you just demolish anything in your way. It’s very satisfying when you finally clear a run with a great build…though depending on the RNG, you WILL get some crummy builds, but that’s the nature of the rogue-like!

It’s likely that a bad build (or really, just getting hit with a new boss or enemy you aren’t prepared for) will lead to a death, but as already established, death isn’t really that much of an inconvenience in the underworld. Zagreus just spawns back at home and is free to immediately try to escape again, but this brief reprieve lets you chat up whoever happens to be around, give them gifts, advance some side-quests, pet your dog Cerberus and practice with weapons and such before you’re ready to go at it again. It’s after a run that you also get to spend a lot of the spoils of your escape attempts. While you lose Boons and weapon upgrades and the like upon death, there’s a LOT of various items you keep with you that have plenty of uses. Darkness shards are used for permanent skills that can be applied to Zagreus, like Death’s Defiance, which grants Zagreus another life upon dying, which can eventually be upgraded to give him THREE extra lives, just as an example. Precious gems can be used to fund a variety of cosmetic changes to the House of Hades. Just because Zagreus doesn’t want to live there anymore, doesn’t mean he can’t at least make it look good! Nectar can be gifted to other characters to improve your relationships with them, with bottles of Ambrosia being required later on, while special keys can be used to unlock weapons, more upgrades for your Darkness shards, or just used as a secondary currency for trade. There’s really a LOT of different items to mess around with, though admittedly if you’re the type to want to max out EVERYTHING you’ll be in it for the long haul, as there is not only a LOT of stuff to upgrade and purchase, but the random nature of things means rewards are never a guarantee. Though it’s worth noting the game’s totally beatable without going nuts with completion. Which I guess leads me to the biggest compliment I can give this game: even after “beating” it, I still can’t stop playing, and there’s plenty of reason to keep going.

REPLAYS AND REWARDS

So, full disclosure, I’ve gotten Zagreus to the surface. Several times, actually. But I haven’t quite “beaten” the game yet. In fact, at the risk of sounding pretentious, it is as if the true game begins after you’ve beaten it once. Without getting into specifics, let’s just say the game gives you a very good in-story reason to keep playing, and you won’t reach credits without several completed runs under your belt. And even then, there’s still stuff to do. I’m almost 30 hours into Hades and I’ve barely scratched the surface honestly. Every major character has their own sidequest you can undergo, but it can be slow goings when it comes to advancing them. Trying out all the weapons and boons and different combinations will easily take dozens of hours to fully experience, though the game has a handy in-game list of what you’ve done and haven’t done, as well as in-game achievements with tangible rewards that will spur you on. I was admittedly surprised at how dense of a game Hades can be. A successful run will likely take you somewhere between a half-hour to an hour, which is pretty devious. Just long enough to stay engaging throughout, and short enough that I can keep convincing myself that I have time for “one more run” and then suddenly several hours have gone by. Strangest thing.

Something that’s become a bit of a staple of Supergiant’s work is customizable difficulty, various modifiers you can flip on to make the game harder if you so desire, which in Hades takes the form of the Pact of Punishment. After a successful run, you can turn on a given pact to spice things up for subsequent runs. Maybe enemies do a bit more damage, or you give yourself a super strict time limit to clear a run. You can give enemies armor that makes them sturdier, or jack up the in-game shop’s prices. You can even be forced to give up Boons in order to advance past certain doors! Probably the most impressive Pact is Extreme Measures, which ends up greatly affecting the boss fights in the game…trust me when I say you won’t be ready for them the first time you flip that on. Activating a given pact increases a “heat gauge” that, should it reach a given level, will end up granting you various special items to help with fully upgrading and unlocking stuff. Of course, with each successful run completed with a given Pact activated, you’ll have to raise the heat more and more in order to keep getting these upgrade materials so be prepared. You can also still gain these materials (albeit at a much slower rate) playing through the game normally though, and there’s really no penalty for choosing NOT to activate a given pact. On the flip side of things, there’s also a God Mode you can toggle on that makes Zagreus a little stronger with each death, which can help those that want to see more of the story but are struggling with the game. Have your God Cake and eat it too!

All and all, this game just delivers on every level and I’ve been devouring it since release whenever I have a spare minute. You can see that Supergiant is taking all the lessons they learned from each previous game and combined it to make what is easily their best game yet. I don’t throw around words like “masterpiece” lightly, but Hades is just such a slam dunk that I’m sorely tempted to call it just that. I mean, if you hate rogue-likes, I’m not sure if Hades will really push you over the edge admittedly? You get way more rewards retained after death than just about any other rogue-like I’ve played, but if you’re the type that hates having to constantly adapt and not being able to memorize what’s coming, I can see this not working for you. But for me at least, I’ve had an absolute blast with the game and the only issue I really have with it is a small nitpick at best. When it comes to getting to know various characters, you can talk to them and give them Nectar or Ambrosia as a gift right? But what happens if they don’t show up on a given run? Or what if they DO show up, but they’re locked into a conversation with someone else? That means you can’t really advance anything with them until a given dice roll pities you. MEGAERA I THINK YOU’RE COOL, PLEASE JUST TALK TO M—oh sorry, don’t know where that came from… So yeah, that’s the nittiest of picks.

I adore this game’s cast, the voice work and music is excellent to the ear, the combat is engaging, the gameplay loop is addicting…need I say more? I mean, I’ve said almost 3000 words, but to really sum it up…I highly recommend Hades and I hope you don’t pass it up if you’re even remotely interested. You can find it on Steam, the Epic store and Switch as of right now, and I don’t think you could go wrong with any version.

Blood and darkness await you.

-B